Pan - The China Threat in American Self-Imagination - The Discursive Construction of Other As Power Politics

The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as
Power Politics
Author(s): Chengxin Pan
Source: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 29, No. 3 (June-July 2004), pp. 305-331
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Alternatives 29 (2004), 305-331
The "China Threat" in

American Self-Imagination:
The Discursive Construction of
Other as Power Politics
Chengxin Pan*
We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.

-The Talmud
China and its relationship with the United States has long
fascinating subject of study in the mainstream U.S. internati
relations community. This is reflected, for example, in the c
heated debates over whether China is primarily a strategic thr
or a market bonanza for the United States and whether contain-
ment or engagement is the best way to deal with it.1

While U.S. China scholars argue fiercely over "what China pre-
cisely is," their debates have been underpinned by some common
ground, especially in terms of a positivist epistemology. Firstly, the
believe that China is ultimately a knowable object, whose realit
can be, and ought to be, empirically revealed by scientific means.
For example, after expressing his dissatisfaction with often co
flicting Western perceptions of China, David M. Lampton, former
president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, sug-
gests that "it is time to step back and look at where China is today
where it might be going, and what consequences that direction wi
hold for the rest of the world."2 Like many other China scholars,
Lampton views his object of study as essentially "something we ca
stand back from and observe with clinical detachment."3
Secondly, associated with the first assumption, it is commonly

believed that China scholars merely serve as "disinterested observers"
*Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts,

Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Chengxin. Pan@anu.
edu.au
305
306 The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination
and that their studies of China are neutral, passive descriptions of

reality.
And thirdly, in pondering whether China poses a threat or
offers an opportunity to the United States, they rarely raise the
question of "what the United States is." That is, the meaning of the
United States is believed to be certain and beyond doubt.
I do not dismiss altogether the conventional ways of debating
China. It is not the purpose of this article to venture my own "obser-
vation" of "where China is today," nor to join the "containment" ver-
sus "engagement" debate per se. Rather, I want to contribute to a
novel dimension of the China debate by questioning the seemingly
unproblematic assumptions shared by most China scholars in the
mainstream IR community in the United States. To perform this
task, I will focus attention on a particularly significant component
of the China debate; namely, the "China threat" literature.
More specifically, I want to argue that U.S. conceptions of
China as a threatening other are always intrinsically linked to how
U.S. policymakers/mainstream China specialists see themselves (as
representatives of the indispensable, security-conscious nation, for
example). As such, they are not value-free, objective descriptions of
an independent, preexisting Chinese reality out there, but are bet-
ter understood as a kind of normative, meaning-giving practice
that often legitimates power politics in U.S.-China relations and
helps transform the "China threat" into social reality. In other
words, it is self-fulfilling in practice, and is always part of the "China
threat" problem it purports merely to describe. In doing so, I seek
to bring to the fore two interconnected themes of self/other con-
structions and of theory as practice inherent in the "China threat"
literature - themes that have been overridden and rendered largely
invisible by those common positivist assumptions.
These themes are of course nothing new nor peculiar to the
"China threat" literature. They have been identified elsewhere by
critics of some conventional fields of study such as ethnography,
anthropology, oriental studies, political science, and international
relations.4 Yet, so far, the China field in the West in general and the
U.S. "China threat" literature in particular have shown remarkable
resistance to systematic critical reflection on both their normative
status as discursive practice and their enormous practical implica-
tions for international politics.5 It is in this context that this article
seeks to make a contribution.
I begin with a brief survey of the "China threat" argument in

contemporary U.S. international relations literature, followed
by an investigation of how this particular argument about China
Chengxin Pan 307
is a discursive construction of other, which is predicated on the

predominant way in which the United States imagines itself as the uni-
versal, indispensable nation-state in constant need of absolute cer-
tainty and security. Finally, this article will illustrate some of the dan-
gerous practical consequences of the "China threat" discourse for
contemporary U.S.-China relations, particularly with regard to the
1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis and the 2001 spy-plane incident.
The "China Threat" Argument
That China constitutes a growing "threat" to the United States is

arguably one of the most important "discoveries" by U.S. IR schol-
ars in the post-Cold War era. For many, this "threat" is obvious for
a variety of reasons concerning economic, military, cultural, and
political dimensions. First and foremost, much of today's alarm
about the "rise of China" resolves around the phenomenal devel-
opment of the Chinese economy during the past twenty-five years:
Its overall size has more than quadrupled since 1978. China expert
Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution suggested that "the
pace of China's industrial development and trade expansion is
unparalleled in modern economic history." He went on: "While
this has led to unprecedented improvements in Chinese incomes
and living standards, it also poses challenges for other countries."6
One such challenge is thought to be job losses in the United
States. A recent study done for a U.S. congressional panel found
that at least 760,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs have migrated to
China since 1992. 7 Associated with this economic boom is China's
growing trade surplus with the United States, which, according to
Time magazine journalists Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro,
increased nearly tenfold from $3.5 billion in 1988 to roughly $33.8
billion in 1995. This trade imbalance, as they put it, is
a function of a Chinese strategy to target certain industries and to

undersell American competition via a system of subsidies and
high tariffs. And that is why the deficit is harmful to the Ameri-
can economy and likely to become an area of ever greater con-
flict in bilateral relations in the future.8
For many, also frightening is a prospect of the emergence of so-

called "Greater China" (a vast economic zone consisting of main-
land China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). As Harry Harding points
out, "Although [Greater China] was originally intended in [a]
benign economic sense, ... in some quarters it evokes much more

aggressive analogies, such as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere or Greater Germany."9
In this context, some believe that China's economic challenge
inevitably gives rise to a simultaneous military threat. As Denny Roy
argues: "A stronger, wealthier China would have greater where-
withal to increase its arsenal of nuclear-armed ICBMs and to
increase their lethality through improvements in range, accu

and survivability. If China continues its rate of economic e
sion, absolute growth in Chinese nuclear capabilities shou
expected to increase."10 Furthermore, U.S. Congressman Bob S
fer claimed that China's military buildup, already under way
alarming rate, was aimed at the United States.11
In addition to what they see as a worrying economic and m
tary expansion, many U.S. China scholars believe that ther
still other dimensions to the "China threat" problem, su
China's "Middle Kingdom" mentality, unresolved historical gr
ances, and an undemocratic government.12 Warren I. Coh
argues that "probably the most ethnocentric people in the wo
the Chinese considered their realm the center of the universe,
Middle Kingdom, and regarded all cultural differences as sign
inferiority."13 As a result, it is argued, the outside world has
reason to be concerned that "China will seek to reestablish in some
form the political and cultural hegemony that it enjoyed in Asia
during the Ming and early Qing dynasties."14
At another level, from a "democratic peace" standpoint, a
China under the rule of an authoritarian regime is predisposed to
behave irresponsibly. As Bernstein and Munro put it:
If the history of the last two hundred years is any guide, the more
democratic countries become, the less likely they are to fight wars
against each other. The more dictatorial they are, the more war
prone they become. Indeed, if the current Beijing regime con-
tinues to engage in military adventurism - as it did in the Taiwan
Strait in 1996- there will be a real chance of at least limited naval
or air clashes with the United States.15
Subscribing to the same logic, Denny Roy asserts that "the estab-
lishment of a liberal democracy in China is extremely unlikely in
the foreseeable future. . . . Without democratization within, there
is no basis for expecting more pacific behavior without."16
However, for other observers, even if China does become democ-
ratized, the threat may still remain. Postulating what he calls the
"democratic paradox" phenomenon, Samuel Huntington suggests
Chengxin Pan 309
that democratization is as likely to encourage international conflict

as it is to promote peace.17 Indeed, many China watchers believe
that an increase in market freedom has already led to an upsurge
in Chinese nationalism, the only thing that allegedly provides the
glue to hold contemporary China together.18 It is argued that such
nationalist sentiment, coupled with memories of its past humilia-
tion and thwarted grandeur, will make China an increasingly dis-
satisfied, revisionist power - hence, a threat to the international
status quo.
Furthermore, some point out that what is also troublesome is
an entrenched realpolitik strategic culture in traditional Chinese
thought. Harvard China expert Alastair Iain Johnston, for exam-
ple, argues that Chinese strategic culture is dominated by the para-
bellum (prepare for war) paradigm. This paradigm believes that
warfare is a relatively constant feature in international relations,
that stakes in conflicts with the adversary are zero-sum in nature,
and that the use of force is the most efficacious means of dealing
with threat.19 From this, Warren Cohen concludes that
if Johnston's analysis of China's strategic culture is correct - and

I believe that it is - generational change will not guarantee a
kinder, gentler China. Nor will the ultimate disappearance of
communism in Beijing. The powerful China we have every reason
to expect in the twenty-first century is likely to be as aggressive
and expansionist as China has been whenever it has been the
dominant power in Asia.20
Apart from these so-called "domestic" reasons for the "China

threat," some commentators arrive at a similar conclusion based on
the historical experience of power realignment as a result of the
rise and fall of great powers. China, from this perspective, is
regarded as the most likely candidate to fill the power vacuum cre-
ated by the end of U.S.-Soviet rivalry in East Asia. This, according
to Kenneth Lieberthal at the University of Michigan (and formerly
of the U.S. State Department), "will inevitably present major chal-
lenges to the United States and the rest of the international system
since the perennial question has been how the international com-
munity can accommodate the ambitions of newly powerful states,
which have always forced realignment of the international system
and have more often than not led to war."21
For this reason, the rise of China has often been likened to
that of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan on the eve of the two
world wars. For example, Richard K. Betts and Thomas J. Christen-
sen argue:
Like Germany a century ago, China is a late-blooming great

power emerging into a world already ordered strategically by ear-
lier arrivals; a continental power surrounded by other powers
who are collectively stronger but individually weaker (with the
exception of the United States and, perhaps, Japan); a bustling
country with great expectations, dissatisfied with its place in the
international pecking order, if only with regard to international
prestige and respect. The quest for a rightful "place in the sun"
will, it is argued, inevitably foster growing friction with Japan,
Russia, India or the United States.22
At this point, it seems there has been enough reason and em-
pirical evidence for the United States to be vigilant about China's
future ambition. While there are debates over the extent to which
the threat is imminent or to which approaches might best explain

it, the "objective" quality of such a threat has been taken for
granted. In the words of Walter McDougall, the Pulitzer Prize-
winning historian and strategic thinker at the University of Penn-
sylvania, recognizing the "China threat" is "commonsense geopoli-
tics."23 For Huntington, the challenge of "Greater China" to the
West is simply a rapidly growing cultural, economic, and political
"reality."24 Similarly, when they claim that "China can pose a grave
problem," Betts and Christensen are convinced that they are merely
referring to "the truth."25
In the following sections, I want to question this "truth," and,
more generally, question the objective, self-evidentiary attitudes
that underpin it. In my view, the "China threat" literature is best
understood as a particular kind of discursive practice that
dichotomizes the West and China as self and other. In this sense,
the "truism" that China presents a growing threat is not so much
an objective reflection of contemporary global reality, per se, as it
is a discursive construction of otherness that acts to bolster the
hegemonic leadership of the United States in the post-Cold Wa

world. Therefore, to have a better understanding of how the dis-
cursive construction of China as a "threat" takes place, it is no
necessary to turn attention to a particularly dominant way of U.S
self-imagination .
The "China Threat" in the American Self-imagination
American Self-imagination and the Construction of Otherness
In 1630, John Winthrop, governor of the British-settled Massach

setts Bay Colony, described the Puritan mission as a moral beacon
Chengxin Pan 311
for the world: "For wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty
upon a Hill, the eies [eyes] of all people are uppon us."26 Couched
in a highly metaphoric manner, the "city on the hill" message
greatly galvanized the imagination of early European settlers in
North America who had desperately needed some kind of certainty
and assurance in the face of many initial difficulties and disap-
pointments in the "New World." Surely there have been numerous
U.S. constructions of "what we are," but this sense of "manifest des-
tiny," discursively repeated and reconstructed time and again by
leading U.S. politicians, social commentators, the popular press,
and numerous school textbooks, has since become a pivotal part of
U.S. self-consciousness. In 1992, Colin Powell, then chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote:
America is a remarkable nation. We are, as Abraham Lincoln told

Congress in December 1862, a nation that "cannot escape his-
tory" because we are "the last best hope of earth." The president
said that his administration and Congress held the "power and
. . . responsibility" to ensure that the hope America promised
would be fulfilled. Today . . . America is still the last best hope of
earth, and we still hold the power and bear the responsibility for
its remaining so.27
This sentiment was echoed by Madeleine K. Albright, the former

secretary of state, who once called the United States "the indis-
pensable nation" and maintained that "we stand tall and hence see
further than other nations."28 More recently, speaking of the U.S.
role in the current war on terrorism, Vice President Dick Cheney
said: "Only we can rally the world in a task of this complexity against
an enemy so elusive and so resourceful. The United States and only
the United States can see this effort through to victory."29 It is worth
adding that Cheney, along with several other senior officials in the
present Bush administration, is a founding member of the Project
for the New American Century, a project designed to ensure U.S.
security and global dominance in the twenty-first century.
Needless to say, the United States is not unique in ethnocentric
thinking. For centuries, China had assumed it was the center of the
world. But what distinguishes U.S. from Chinese ethnocentric self-
identities is that while the latter was based largely on the Confucian
legacy, the former is sanctioned by more powerful regimes of
truth, such as Christianity and modern science. For the early Eng-
lish Puritans, America was part of a divine plan and the settlers
were the Chosen People blessed by covenant with God.30 With the
advent of the scientific age, U.S. exceptionalism began taking on a
secular, scientific dimension. Charles Darwin once argued that "the
wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of

the people, are the results of natural selection."31
The United States has since been construed as the manifesta-
tion of the law of nature, with its ideas and institutions described
not as historically particular but as truly universal. For example, in
his second inaugural address in 1917, President Woodrow Wilso
declared that U.S. principles were "not the principles of a province
or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that
they were the principles of a liberated mankind."32 In short, "The
US is utopia achieved."33 It represents the "End of History."34
What does this U.S. self-knowledge have to do with the way in
which it comes to know others in general and China in particular?
To put it simply, this self-knowledge is always a powerful analytica
framework within which other societies are to be known. By envi
sioning a linear process of historical development with itself at its
apex, the United States places other nations on a common evolu
tionary slope and sees them as inevitably traveling toward the end
of history that is the United States. For example, as a vast, ancien
nation on the other side of the Pacific, China is frequently taken as
a mirror image of the U.S. self. As Michael Hunt points out,
we imagine ourselves locked in a special relationship with the

Chinese, whose apparent moderation and pragmatism mirror our
own most prized attributes and validate our own longings for a
world made over in our own image. If China with its old and rad-
ically different culture can be won, where can we not prevail?35
Yet, in a world of diversity, contingency, and unpredictability,

which is irreducible to universal sameness or absolute certainty
this kind of U.S. knowledge of others often proves frustratingly elu
sive. In this context, rather than questioning the validity of their
own universalist assumptions, the people of the United States
believe that those who are different should be held responsible for
the lack of universal sameness. Indeed, because "we" are universal,
those who refuse or who are unable to become like "us" are no
longer just "others," but are by definition the negation of univer-
sality, or the other. In this way, the other is always built into thi
universalized "American" self. Just as "Primitive ... is a category,
not an object, of Western thought,"36 so the threat of the other i
not some kind of "external reality" discovered by U.S. strategic ana
lysts, but a ready-made category of thought within this particula
way of U.S. self-imagination.
Consequently, there is always a need for the United States to
find a specific other to fill into the totalized category of otherness
Chengxin Pan 313
In the early days of American history, it was Europe, or the "Old

World," that was invoked as its primary other, threatening to cor-
rupt the "New World."37 Shortly after World War II, in the eyes of
U.S. strategists, the Soviet Union emerged as a major deviance
from, hence an archenemy of, their universal path toward progress
via the free market and liberal democracy. And after the demise of
the Soviet Union, the vacancy of other was to be filled by China,
the "best candidate" the United States could find in the post-Cold
War, unipolar world. Not until the September 1 1 attacks in New
York and Washington had China's candidature been suspended, to
be replaced by international terrorism in general and Saddam's
Iraq in particular.38
At first glance, as the "China threat" literature has told us,
China seems to fall perfectly into the "threat" category, particularly
given its growing power. However, China's power as such does not
speak for itself in terms of an emerging threat. By any reasonable
measure, China remains a largely poor country edged with only a
sliver of affluence along its coastal areas. Nor is China's sheer size
a self-evident confirmation of the "China threat" thesis, as other
countries like India, Brazil, and Australia are almost as big as
China. Instead, China as a "threat" has much to do with the partic-
ular mode of U.S. self-imagination. As Steve Chan notes:
China is an object of attention not only because of its huge size,

ancient legacy, or current or projected relative national power.
. . . The importance of China has to do with perceptions, espe-
cially those regarding the potential that Beijing will become an
example, source, or model that contradicts Western liberalism as
the reigning paradigm. In an era of supposed universalizing cos-
mopolitanism, China demonstrates the potency and persistence
of nationalism, and embodies an alternative to Western and espe-
cially U.S. conceptions of democracy and capitalism. China is a
reminder that history is not close to an end.39
Certainly, I do not deny China's potential for strategic misbe-

havior in the global context, nor do I claim the "essential peace-
fulness" of Chinese culture.40 Having said that, my main point here
is that there is no such thing as "Chinese reality" that can auto-
matically speak for itself, for example, as a "threat." Rather, the
"China threat" is essentially a specifically social meaning given to
China by its U.S. observers, a meaning that cannot be discon-
nected from the dominant U.S. self-construction. Thus, to fully
understand the U.S. "China threat" argument, it is essential to rec-
ognize its autobiographical nature.
Indeed, the construction of other is not only a product of U.S.

self-imagination, but often a necessary foil to it. For example, by
taking this particular representation of China as Chinese reality per
se, those scholars are able to assert their self-identity as "mature,"
"rational" realists capable of knowing the "hard facts" of inter-
national politics, in distinction from those "idealists" whose views
are said to be grounded more in "an article of faith" than in "his-
torical experience."41 On the other hand, given that history is
apparently not "progressively" linear, the invocation of a certain
other not only helps explain away such historical uncertainties or
"anomalies" and maintain the credibility of the allegedly universal
path trodden by the United States, but also serves to highlight U.S.
"indispensability." As Samuel Huntington puts it, "If being an
American means being committed to the principles of liberty,
democracy, individualism, and private property, and if there is no
evil empire out there threatening those principles, what indeed
does it mean to be an American, and what becomes of American
national interests?"42 In this way, it seems that the constructions of
the particular U.S. self and its other are always intertwined and
mutually reinforcing.
Some may suggest that there is nothing particularly wrong with
this since psychologists generally agree that "individuals and
groups define their identity by differentiating themselves from and
placing themselves in opposition to others."43 This is perhaps true.
As the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure tells us, meaning itself
depends on difference and differentiation.44 Yet, to understand the
U.S. dichotomized constructions of self/other in this light is to
normalize them and render them unproblematic, because it is also
apparent that not all identity-defining practices necessarily per-
ceive others in terms of either universal sameness or absolute oth-
erness and that difference need not equate to threat.
The Discursive Construction of China

as Other in the "China Threat" Literature
Having examined how the "China threat" literature is enabled by

and serves the purpose of a particular U.S. self-construction, I want
to turn now to the issue of how this literature represents a discur-
sive construction of other, instead of an "objective" account of Chi-
nese reality. This, I argue, has less to do with its portrayal of China
as a threat per se than with its essentialization and totalization of
China as an externally knowable object, independent of historically
contingent contexts or dynamic international interactions.
In this sense, the discursive construction of China as a threat-
ening other cannot be detached from (neo) realism, a positivist,
Chengxin Pan 315
ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced

to endless interstate rivalry for power and survival. As many critical
IR scholars have noted, (neo) realism is not a transcendent descrip-
tion of global reality but is predicated on the modernist Western
identity, which, in the quest for scientific certainty, has come to
define itself essentially as the sovereign territorial nation-state. This
realist self-identity of Western states leads to the constitution of
anarchy as the sphere of insecurity, disorder, and war. In an anar-
chical system, as (neo) realists argue, "the gain of one side is often
considered to be the loss of the other,"45 and "All other states are
potential threats."46 In order to survive in such a system, states
inevitably pursue power or capability. In doing so, these realist
claims represent what R. B. J. Walker calls "a specific historical artic-
ulation of relations of universality/ particularity and self/ Other."47
The (neo) realist paradigm has dominated the U.S. IR disci-
pline in general and the U.S. China studies field in particular. As
Kurt Campbell notes, after the end of the Cold War, a whole new
crop of China experts "are much more likely to have a background
in strategic studies or international relations than China itself."48
As a result, for those experts to know China is nothing more or less
than to undertake a geopolitical analysis of it, often by asking only
a few questions such as how China will "behave" in a strategic sense
and how it may affect the regional or global balance of power, with
a particular emphasis on China's military power or capabilities. As
Thomas J. Christensen notes, "Although many have focused on
intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of
the [China threat] debate is the assessment of China's overall
future military power compared with that of the United States and
other East Asian regional powers."49 Consequently, almost by
default, China emerges as an absolute other and a threat thanks to
this (neo) realist prism.
The (neo) realist emphasis on survival and security in inter-
national relations dovetails perfectly with the U.S. self-imagination,
because for the United States to define itself as the indispensable
nation in a world of anarchy is often to demand absolute security. As
James Chace and Caleb Carr note, "for over two centuries the aspi-
ration toward an eventual condition of absolute security has been
viewed as central to an effective American foreign policy."50 And this
self-identification in turn leads to the definition of not only "tangi-
ble" foreign powers but global contingency and uncertainty per se as
threats. For example, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush
repeatedly said that "the enemy [of America] is unpredictability. The
enemy is instability."51 Similarly, arguing for the continuation of U.S.
Cold War alliances, a high-ranking Pentagon official asked, "if we
pull out, who knows what nervousness will result?"52
Thus understood, by its very uncertain character, China would

now automatically constitute a threat to the United States. For
example, Bernstein and Munro believe that "China's political
unpredictability, the always-present possibility that it will fall into a
state of domestic disunion and factional fighting," constitutes a
source of danger.53 In like manner, Richard Betts and Thomas
Christensen write:
If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate,

should the world breathe a sigh of relief? Not entirely. . . . Draw-
ing China into the web of global interdependence may do more
to encourage peace than war, but it cannot guarantee that the pur-
suit of heartfelt political interests will be blocked by a fear of eco-
nomic consequences. . . . U.S. efforts to create a stable balance
across the Taiwan Strait might deter the use of force under cer-
tain circumstances, but certainly not all.54
The upshot, therefore, is that since China displays no absolute cer-

tainty for peace, it must be, by definition, an uncertainty, and
hence, a threat.
In the same way, a multitude of other unpredictable factors
(such as ethnic rivalry, local insurgencies, overpopulation, drug
trafficking, environmental degradation, rogue states, the spread of
weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism) have
also been labeled as "threats" to U.S. security. Yet, it seems that in
the post-Cold War environment, China represents a kind of uncer-
tainty par excellence. "Whatever the prospects for a more peaceful,
more democratic, and more just world order, nothing seems more
uncertain today than the future of post-Deng China,"55 argues
Samuel Kim. And such an archetypical uncertainty is crucial to the
enterprise of U.S. self-construction, because it seems that only an
uncertainty with potentially global consequences such as China
could justify U.S. indispensability or its continued world domi-
nance. In this sense, Bruce Cumings aptly suggested in 1996 that
China (as a threat) was basically "a metaphor for an enormously
expensive Pentagon that has lost its bearings and that requires a
formidable 'renegade state' to define its mission (Islam is rather
vague, and Iran lacks necessary weights)."56
It is mainly on the basis of this self-fashioning that many U.S.
scholars have for long claimed their "expertise" on China. For
example, from his observation (presumably on Western TV net-
works) of the Chinese protest against the U.S. bombing of their
embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, Robert Kagan is confident
enough to speak on behalf of the whole Chinese people, claiming
Chengxin Pan 317
that he knows "the fact" of "what [China] really thinks about the
United States." That is, "they consider the United States an enemy -
or, more precisely, the enemy. . . . How else can one interpret the
Chinese government's response to the bombing?" he asks, rhetori-
cally.57 For Kagan, because the Chinese "have no other informa-
tion" than their government's propaganda, the protesters cannot
rationally "know" the whole event as "we" do. Thus, their anger
must have been orchestrated, unreal, and hence need not be taken
seriously.58 Given that Kagan heads the U.S. Leadership Project at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is very much
at the heart of redefining the United States as the benevolent
global hegemon, his confidence in speaking for the Chinese "other"
is perhaps not surprising.
In a similar vein, without producing in-depth analysis, Bern-
stein and Munro invoke with great ease such all-encompassing
notions as "the Chinese tradition" and its "entire three-thousand-
year history."59 In particular, they repeatedly speak of what China's
"real" goal is: "China is an unsatisfied and ambitious power whose
goal is to dominate Asia. . . . China aims at achieving a kind of
hegemony. . . . China is so big and so naturally powerful that [we
know] it will tend to dominate its region even if it does not intend to
do so as a matter of national policy "m Likewise, with the goal of ab-
solute security for the United States in mind, Richard Betts and
Thomas Christensen argue:
The truth is that China can pose a grave problem even if it does
not become a military power on the American model, does not
intend to commit aggression, integrates into a global economy,
and liberalizes politically. Similarly, the United States could face a
dangerous conflict over Taiwan even if it turns out that Beijing
lacks the capacity to conquer the island. . . . This is true because
of geography; because of America's reliance on alliances to pro-
ject power; and because of China's capacity to harm U.S. forces,
U.S. regional allies, and the American homeland, even while los-
ing a war in the technical, military sense.61
By now, it seems clear that neither China's capabilities nor

intentions really matter. Rather, almost by its mere geographical
existence, China has been qualified as an absolute strategic "other,"
a discursive construct from which it cannot escape. Because of this,
"China" in U.S. IR discourse has been objectified and deprived of
its own subjectivity and exists mainly in and for the U.S. self. Little
wonder that for many U.S. China specialists, China becomes merely
a "national security concern" for the United States, with the "severe
disproportion between the keen attention to China as a security

concern and the intractable neglect of China's [own] security con-
cerns in the current debate."62
At this point, at issue here is no longer whether the "China
threat" argument is true or false, but is rather its reflection of a
shared positivist mentality among mainstream China experts that
they know China better than do the Chinese themselves.63 "We"
alone can know for sure that they consider "us" their enemy and
thus pose a menace to "us." Such an account of China, in many
ways, strongly seems to resemble Orientalists' problematic distinc-
tion between the West and the Orient. Like orientalism, the U.S.
construction of the Chinese "other" does not require that China
acknowledge the validity of that dichotomous construction.
Indeed, as Edward Said point out, "It is enough for 'us' to set up
these distinctions in our own minds; [and] 'they' become 'they'
accordingly."64
It may be the case that there is nothing inherently wrong with
perceiving others through one's own subjective lens. Yet, what is
problematic with mainstream U.S. China watchers is that they
refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the inherent fluidity of
Chinese identity and subjectivity and try instead to fix its ambiguity
as absolute difference from "us," a kind of certainty that denotes
nothing but otherness and threats. As a result, it becomes difficult
to find a legitimate space for alternative ways of understanding an
inherently volatile, amorphous China65 or to recognize that China's
future trajectory in global politics is contingent essentially on how
"we" in the United States and the West in general want to see it as
well as on how the Chinese choose to shape it.66 Indeed, discourses
of "us" and "them" are always closely linked to how "we" as "what
we are" deal with "them" as "what they are" in the practical realm.
This is exactly how the discursive strategy of perceiving China as a
threatening other should be understood, a point addressed in the
following section, which explores some of the practical dimension
of this discursive strategy in the containment perspectives and
hegemonic ambitions of U.S. foreign policy.
The ''China Threat" Discourse

and the New U.S. Containment Policy
The discursive construction of the U.S. self and the "Chinese
threat" argument are not innocent, descriptive accounts of

"independent" reality. Rather, they are always a clarion call for
practice of power politics. At the apex of this power-politics ag
Chengxin Pan 319
is the politico-strategic question of "what is to be done" to make

the United States secure from the (perceived) threats it faces. At a
general level, as Benjamin Schwarz proposes, this requires an
unhindered path to U.S. global hegemony that
means not only that the United States must dominate wealthy and
technologically sophisticated states in Europe and East Asia -
America's "allies" - but also that it must deal with such nuisances
as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong II, so that

potential great powers need not acquire the means to deal with
those problems themselves. And those powers that eschew Amer-
ican supervision - such as China - must be both engaged and
contained. The upshot of "American leadership" is that the
United States must spend nearly as much on national security as
the rest of the world combined.67
This "neocontainment" policy has been echoed in the "China

threat" literature. In a short yet decisive article titled "Why We
Must Contain China," Washington Post columnist Charles Krautham-
mer insists that "containing China" and "undermining its ruthless
dictatorship" constitute two essential components of "any rational
policy toward a rising, threatening China." Not only is a policy
other than containment considered irrational, but even a delay to
implement it would be undesirable, as he urges that "containment
of such a bully must begin early in its career." To this end, Kraut-
hammer offers such "practical" options as strengthening regional
alliances (with Vietnam, India, and Russia, as well as Japan) to box
in China; standing by Chinese dissidents; denying Beijing the right
to host the Olympics; and keeping China from joining the World
Trade Organization on the terms it desires.68
Containing China is of course not the only option arising from
the "China threat" literature. More often than not, there is a sub-
tle, business-style "crisis management" policy. For example, Bern-
stein and Munro shy away from the word containment, preferring to
call their China policy management.69 Yet, what remains unchanged
in the management formula is a continued promotion of control-
ling China. For instance, a perusal of Bernstein and Munro's texts
reveals that what they mean by management is no different than
Krauthammer's explicit containment stance.70 By framing U.S.-
China relations as an issue of "crisis management," they leave little
doubt of who is the "manager" and who is to be "managed." In a
more straightforward manner, Betts and Christensen state that
coercion and war must be part and parcel of the China manage-
ment policy:
In addressing the China challenge, the United States needs to

think hard about three related questions: first, how to avoid crises
and war through prudent, coercive diplomacy; second, how to
manage crises and fight a war if the avoidance effort fails; third,
how to end crises and terminate war at costs acceptable to the
United States and its allies.71
This is not to imply that the kind of perspectives outlined above

will automatically be translated into actual China policy, but one
does not have to be exceedingly perceptive to note that the "China
threat" perspective does exert enormous influence on U.S. policy
making on China. To illustrate this point, I want now to examine
some specific implications of U.S. representations of the "China
threat" for U.S.-China relations in relation to the 1995-1996 Taiwan
Strait missile crisis and the "spy plane" incident of 2001.
Theory as Practice 1: The Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis
In the eyes of many U.S. China watchers, China's approach to the

Taiwan question is a microcosm of its grand strategy to dominate
Asia. The argument is that nowhere is the threatening ambition
more palpable than in China's saber-rattling missile tests near Tai-
wan's coast in 1995-1996, in addition to its long-standing refusal to
renounce the use of force as a last resort to settle the dispute.72
While the 1995-1996 missile crisis has been a favorite "starting
point" for many pundits and practitioners to paint a frightening pic-
ture of China and to justify U.S. firm response to it, what is often
conveniently overlooked is the question of how the "China threat"
discourse itself had played a constitutive role in the lead-up to that
crisis. Limits of space forbid exploring this complex issue here. Sim-
ply put, the Taiwan question was created largely as a result of wide-
spread U.S. perceptions of China as a "Red Menace" in the wake of
the "loss of China" and the outbreak of the Korean War. To thwart
what it saw as an orchestrated Communist offensive in Asia, the
United States deployed the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait
as part of its Cold War containment strategy, thereby effectively pre-
venting the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China. While the
United States abandoned its containment and isolation policy
toward China in the 1970s and the two countries established full
diplomatic relations in 1979, the conventional image of the "Red
Menace" lingered on in the United States. To manage such a
"threat," the U.S. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act shortly
after the normalization of U.S.-China relations, renewing U.S. com-
mitment to Taiwan's defense even though diplomatic ties with the
island had been severed.73
Chengxin Pan 321
This confrontational policy serves not only to shore up Taiwan's

defense capabilities but also to induce its independent ambition
and further complicate cross-strait relations. As former U.S. defense
official Chas Freeman remarked, "U.S. arms sales to Taiwan no
longer work to boost Taipei's confidence that it can work out its dif-
ferences with Beijing. Instead, they bolster the view that Taiwan can
go its own way."74 For instance, amid growing sympathy from the
Republican-dominated Congress and the elite media as well as the
expanded ties with the United States, Taiwan responded coolly to
Beijing's call for dialogue in January 1995. In June 1995, Taiwan's
flexible diplomacy, designed to burnish its independent image, cul-
minated in its president Lee Teng-hui's high-profile visit to the
United States. This in turn reinforced Beijing's suspicion that the
real U.S. intention was to frustrate its reunification goal, leaving it
apparently no other choice but to prepare militarily for what it saw
as a worst-case scenario. All this constituted the major context in
which the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile exercises took place.
For most Chinese, the carrying out of these military exercises,
well within their own territory, had little to do with attacking Tai-
wan, much less with challenging U.S. security interests in the west-
ern Pacific. Rather, it was about China's long-cherished dream of
national unity, with its "sabre rattling" tactics serving merely as a
warning to the United States, as well as to Taiwan. However, inter-
preting such exercises as China's muscle-flexing with direct security
implications for the region, with "an almost 19th-century display of
gunboat diplomacy,"75 the United States dispatched two nuclear-
powered aircraft carriers to the region of Taiwan.
While not denying the potential security repercussions of
China's missile tests for the region, I suggest that the flashpoint of
Taiwan says as much about the danger of this U.S. approach to
China as about the threat of Beijing's display of force itself. "Had
Bill Clinton projected a constancy of purpose and vision in China
policy ... in 1993-1994," David M. Lampton argues, "he might not
have been challenged in the Taiwan Strait in 1995-1996 with missile
exercises."76 Indeed, it was primarily in the context of this U.S.
intervention that Zhongguo keyi shuo bu (China can say no), one of
the most anti-U.S. books ever produced in China, emerged and
quickly became a best-seller in the Chinese reading world.77 Mean-
while, some Chinese strategic thinkers were so alarmed by the U.S.
show of strength that they told Helmut Sonnenfeldt, one of Henry
Kissinger's close associates, that they were rereading the early
works of George F. Kennan because "containment had been the
basis of American policy toward the Soviet Union; now that the
United States was turning containment against China, they wanted
to learn how it had started and evolved."78
If such a scary interaction between the United States and China

remained somehow obscured here, it would soon be manifested
again in another standoff in U.S.-China relations; namely, the spy-
plane incident of 2001.
Theory as Practice 2: The 2001 Spy-Plane Incident
Following the 1995-1996 missile crisis, mainstream China observers

have continued to take the Taiwan question as a purely geopolitical
or security issue, which accordingly should be understood and dealt
with simply from the time-honored balance-of-power, zero-sum game
perspectives. For example, Bernstein and Munro insist that Taiwan's
reunification with the mainland Vili leave China in possession of yet
another immense economic prize. . . . Complete Chinese reunifica-
tion, in other words, would further upset the balance of power and
vastly enhance China's economic and strategic strength."79 Com-
menting on this typical way of representing the Taiwan question, the
Taiwan-based scholar Chih-yu Shih suggests that
the national security analysis may seem to be a more tangible

approach to dissecting the rationale behind Beijing's "policy of
coercion" and, because it appears sensible to us, can alleviate our
need to pursue Beijing's motivations more deeply. Not only can
we thus camouflage our embarrassment at not really knowing
China, but also Beijing's discomforting behavioural patterns be-
come comfortably familiar.80
Clearly, the practical implications of this kind of representation

go far beyond that. After perceiving a power imbalance in the Tai-
wan Strait in favor of China, James Lilley (former U.S. ambassador
to China) and Carl Ford proposed: "The name of the game for Tai-
wan, then, is deterrence," which means that the United States must
help Taiwan's military maintain "a qualitative edge over the
PRC."81 The 2002 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Security Review
Commission reached similar conclusions, recommending, among
other things, "deterring China attacking Taiwan" and "supporting
Taiwan's ability to defend itself without outside assistance." In its
formal conclusion, the review commission, made up of well-known
U.S. China experts as well as influential policymakers, vows to con-
tinue monitoring China in every aspect relating to "our national
security concerns."82
In fact, U.S. monitoring activity, such as conducting reconnais-
sance flights along Chinese borders, had always been part of its
China policy. So went the rationale:
Chengxin Pan 323
The Chinese say they have the right to use force to reclaim Tai-
wan because it belongs to them, and they regularly practice for an
invasion. This threat of force is why on April 1st [2001], the U.S. Navy's
EP-3 surveillance plane was in the area to monitor China 's military
preparations. ss
Yet it turned out that the EP-3 spy plane collided with a Chinese
navy fighter jet that was tailing it over the South China Sea, some
fifty miles from the coast of China's Hainan Province. The Chinese
jet crashed into the waters below, while the crippled spy plane
landed on Hainan island. Washington demanded immediate
return of its crew and plane, while Beijing insisted that the United
States bear the responsibility for the midair collision and apologize
for the incident.
Rather than reflecting on how their new containment policy

might have contributed to this incident in the first place, many
U.S. realist analysts hastily interpreted it as further objective proof
of the long-suspected "China threat." As Allen S. Whiting put it,
the collision "focused attention anew on Beijing's willingness to
risk the use of force in pursuit of political objectives."84 It was as if
the whole incident had little to do with U.S. spying, which was seen
as "routine" and "normal." Instead, it was the Chinese who were
said to be "playing a dangerous game," without regard to the old
spy etiquette formulated during the Cold War.85
For other observers, China's otherness was embodied also in its
demand for a U.S. apology. For example, Merle Goldman, a history
professor at Boston University, said that the Chinese emphasis on
apologies was rooted in the Confucian value system: "This kind of
internalized consensus was the way China was ruled for thousands
of years."86 From this perspective, China's request for an apology
was preordained by a fixed Chinese tradition and national psyche
and had nothing whatsoever to do with the specific context of this
incident in which China was spied on, its sovereignty violated, and
one of its pilots lost.
Thus, even in the face of such a potentially explosive incident,
the self-fulfilling effect of the "China threat" discourse has not
been acknowledged by mainstream U.S. China analysts. To the con-
trary, deterring and containing China has gained new urgency. For
example, in the aftermath of this standoff, neoconservative colum-
nists Robert Kagan and William Kristol (chairman of the Project
for the New American Century) wrote that "not only is the sale of
Aegis [to Taiwan] . . . the only appropriate response to Chinese behav-
ior; We have been calling for the active containment of China for
the past six years precisely because we think it is the only way to
keep the peace."87 Although the sale of the Aegis destroyers was
deferred, President George W. Bush approved an arms package for
Taiwan that included so-called "defensive" weapons such as four
Kidd class destroyers, eight diesel submarines, and twelve P-3C sub-
marine-hunting aircraft, as well as minesweeping helicopters, tor-
pedoes, and amphibious assault vehicles. On this arms sale, David
Shambaugh, a Washington-based China specialist, had this to say:
"Given the tangible threats that the Chinese military can present to
Taiwan - particularly a naval blockade or quarantine and missile
threats - this is a sensible and timely package."88
Given the danger and high stakes involved, some may wonder
why China did not simply cooperate so that there would be no
need for U.S. "containment." To some extent, China has been
cooperative. For example, Beijing was at pains to calm a disgrun-
tled Chinese public by explaining that the U.S. "sorry" letter issued
at the end of the spy-plane incident was a genuine "apology," with
U.S. officials openly rejecting that interpretation. On the Taiwan
question, China has dropped many of its previous demands (such
as "one China" being defined as the People's Republic). As to the
South China Sea, China has allowed the ASEAN Regional Forum
to seek a negotiated solution to the Spratly Islands dispute and also
agreed to join the Philippines as cochairs of the working group on
confidence-building measures.89
In January 2002, China chose to play down an incident that a
presidential jet outfitted in the United States had been crammed
with sophisticated satellite-operated bugs, a decision that, as the
New York Times puts it, "illustrates the depth of China's current com-
mitment to cultivating better relations with the United States."90
Also, over the years, China has ratified a number of key nonprolif-
eration treaties and pledged not to assist countries in developing
missiles with ranges that exceed the limits established under the
Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). More recently, China
has collaborated with the United States in the war on terrorism,
including issuing new regulations to restrict the export of missile
technology to countries usually accused by the United States of aid-
ing terrorists. Indeed, as some have argued, by any reasonable mea-
sure China is now more responsible in international affairs than at
any time since 1949.91
And yet, the real problem is that, so long as the United States
continues to stake its self-identity on the realization of absolute
security, no amount of Chinese cooperation would be enough. For
instance, Iain Johnston views the constructive development of
China's arms-control policy as a kind of "realpolitik adaptation,"
rather than "genuine learning."92 From this perspective, however
Chengxin Pan 325
China has changed, it would remain a fundamentally threatening

other, which the United States cannot live with but has to take full
control of.
* * *
I have argued above that the "China

stream U.S. IR literature is derived, pr
construction of otherness. This cons
particular narcissistic understanding o
tivist-based realism, concerned with abs
a concern central to the dominant U
these frameworks, it seems imperative
threatening, absolute other since it is
U.S.-led evolutionary scheme or guaran
United States, so that U.S. power pre
War world can still be legitimated.
Not only does this reductionist rep
expense of understanding China as a dy
try but it leads inevitably to a policy o
tends to enhance the influence of realp
extremism, and hard-line stance in t
dose of the containment strategy is lik
impact on U.S.-China relations, as the 1
the 2001 spy-plane incident have vivid
Chalmers Johnson is right when he su
tainment toward China implies the pos
during the Cold War vis-à-vis the form
of terror prevented war between the United States and
the Soviet Union, but this may not work in the case of China."93
For instance, as the United States presses ahead with a missile-
defence shield to "guarantee" its invulnerability from rather
unlikely sources of missile attacks, it would be almost certain to
intensify China's sense of vulnerability and compel it to expand its
current small nuclear arsenal so as to maintain the efficiency of
its limited deterrence. In consequence, it is not impossible that the
two countries, and possibly the whole region, might be dragged into
an escalating arms race that would eventually make war more likely.
Neither the United States nor China is likely to be keen on
fighting the other. But as has been demonstrated, the "China
threat" argument, for all its alleged desire for peace and security,
tends to make war preparedness the most "realistic" option for
both sides. At this juncture, worthy of note is an interesting com-
ment made by Charlie Neuhauser, a leading CIA China specialist,
on the Vietnam War, a war fought by the United States to contain

the then-Communist "other." Neuhauser says, "Nobody wants it. We
don't want it, Ho Chi Minh doesn't want it; it's simply a question of
annoying the other side."94 And, as we know, in an unwanted war
some fifty-eight thousand young people from the United States and
an estimated two million Vietnamese men, women, and children
lost their lives.
Therefore, to call for a halt to the vicious circle of theory as

practice associated with the "China threat" literature, tinkering
with the current positivist-dominated U.S. IR scholarship on China
is no longer adequate. Rather, what is needed is to question this
un-self-reflective scholarship itself, particularly its connections with
the dominant way in which the United States and the West in gen-
eral represent themselves and others via their positivist epistemol-
ogy, so that alternative, more nuanced, and less dangerous ways of
interpreting and debating China might become possible.
Notes
I wish to thank Jim George, Katrina Lee Koo, Derek McDougall, and R. B. J.
Walker for their comments and help on earlier versions of this article.
1. It is impossible to give a complete list ot the relevant literature
here. For some reviews of this debate, see David Shambaugh, "Contain-
ment or Engagement of China? Calculating Beijing's Responses," Inter-
national Security 21, no. 2 (1996): 180-209; Owen Harries, "A Year of
Debating China," The National Interest 58 (1999/2000): 141-147; James
Morris, "Containment or Engagement: America's Choice," Pacifica Review
12, no. 2 (2000): 197-201; and Enbao Wang, "Engagement or Contain-
ment? Americans' Views on China and Sino-US Relations," Journal of Con-
temporary China 11, no. 31 (2002): 381-392.
2. David M. Lampton, "China," Foreign Policy 110 (1998): 13.
3. R. B. J. Walker, One World, Many Worlds (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner,
1988), p. 22.
4. Among the enormous relevant literature, see Tzvetan Todorov, The
Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper 8c Row,
1984); Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); James Clifford, The
Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Edward W. Said, Ori-
entalism (New York: Vantage Books, 1978); Ashis Nandy, The Intimate
Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1983); Michael J. Shapiro, The Politics of Representation: Writing
Practices in Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1987); William E. Connolly, Identity /Difference: Demo-
cratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1991); R. B. J. Walker, Inside /Outside: International Relations as Political The-
ory (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Jim George, Dis-
courses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re) Introduction to International Relations
Chengxin Pan 327
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Car-

tographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1997); David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy
and the Politics of Identity, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1998); Charles Nathanson, "The Social Construction of the Soviet
Threat: A Study in the Politics of Representation," Alternatives 13, no. 4
(1988): 443-483; and Simon Dalby, "Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet
Union As Other," Alternatives 13, no. 4 (1988): 415-442. For more philo-
sophical inquiries into these themes, see, for example, Emmanuel Levinas,
Time and the Other and Additional Essays, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pitts-
burgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1987); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline
of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
and Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,
1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, et al. (New York: Pan-
theon Books, 1980).
5. In varying degrees, there are a few notable exceptions at the mar-
gin of or outside the mainstream U.S. China studies community. See, for
example, Richard Madsen, China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Bruce Cumings, "The
World Shakes China," The National Interest 43 (1996): 28-41; Tani E. Bar-
low, ed., Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1997); and Peter Hays Gries, "A 'China Threat'? Power
and Passion in Chinese 'Face Nationalism,'" World Affairs 162, no. 2 (1999):
63-75.
6. Quoted in Evelyn Iritani and Maria Dickerson, "People's Republic
of Products," Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2002: www.latimes.com/busi-
ness/la-fi-chinaloct20. story.
7. Ibid.
8. Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with
China (New York: Knopf, 1997), pp. 132-135.
9. Harry Harding, "The Concept of "Greater China": Themes, Varia-
tions and Reservations," in David Shambaugh, ed., Greater China: The Next
Superpower? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 31.
10. Denny Roy, "Rising China and U.S. Interests: Inevitable vs. Con-
tingent Hazards," Orbis47, no. 1 (2003): 130.
11. Congressional Record, March 14, 2002. www.fas.org/irp/congress/
2002_cr/ h031402.
12. Richard K. Betts and Thomas J. Christensen, "China: Getting the
Questions Right," The National Interest 66 (2000/2001): 17.
13. Warren I. Cohen, America's Response to China: A History of Sino-
American Relations, 3d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 3.
14. Harry Harding, China's Second Revolution: Reform after Mao (Sydney:
Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 258. For a study of the "Sinocentric" world order,
see John K. Fairbank, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's For-
eign Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968).
15. Bernstein and Munro, note 8, p. 18.
16. Denny Roy, "Hegemon on the Horizon? China's Threat to East
Asian Security," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 157.
17. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order (London: Touchstone Books, 1996), p. 94.
18. John F. Copper, "The 'Glue' That Holds China Together," The
World äf 117, no. 7 (2002): 20-25.
19. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand
Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
20. Warren I. Cohen, "China's Strategic Culture," Atlantic Monthly 279,
no. 3 (1997): 105.
21. Kenneth Lieberthal, "A New China Strategy," Foreign Affairs 74, no.
6 (1995): 36; Nicholas D. Kristof, "The Rise of China," Foreign Affairs 72,
no. 5 (1993): 74.
22. Betts and Christensen, note 12, p. 23. For the Germany analogy,
see also Edward Friedman, "The Challenge of a Rising China: Another
Germany?" in Robert J. Lieber, ed., Eagle Adrift: American Foreign Policy at
the End of the Century (New York: Longmans, 1997), dd. 215-245.
23. See Bernstein and Munro, note 8, p. 216.
24. Huntington, note 17, p. 169.
25. Betts and Christensen, note 12, p. 18.
26. Quoted in Siobhán McEvoy-Levy, American Exceptionalism and US
Foreign Policy: Public Diplomacy at the End of the Cold War (New York: Pal-
grave, 2001), p. 24.
27. Colin L. Powell, "U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead," Foreign Affairs
71, no. 5 (1992): 32.
28. See Samuel P. Huntington, "The Lonely Superpower," Foreign
Affairs 78, no. 2 (1999): 37.
29. David E. Sänger, "Allies Hear Sour Notes in 'Axis of Evil' Chorus,"
New York Times, February 17, 2002, p. A18. See also Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic
Books, 1990); and Owen Harries, ed., America's Purpose: New Visions of U.S.
Foreien Policy (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1991).
u y - ■
30. S
Wisconsin Press. 1978Ì. n. 33.
31. Quoted in Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of
Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1936), p. 3.
32. Quoted ibid., p. 21.
33. Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso, 1988), p. 77.
34. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," The National Interest 16
(1989): 3-18.
35. Michael H. Hunt, "Chinese Foreign Relations in Historical Per-
spective," in Harry Harding, ed., China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 40-41.
36. Fabian, note 4, p. 18.
37. See Daniel J. Boorstin, America and the Image of Europe: Reflections on
American Thought (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), pp. 19-20; Jack P.
Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity
from 1492 to 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993),
p. 122; and Samuel P. Huntington, "The Erosion of American National
Interests," Foreign Affairs 76, no. 5 (1997): 29-31.
38. However, as terrorism proves too elusive to take on, and some of
its reified symbols (e.g., Saddam Hussein) can be relatively easily dealt
with, China might again emerge as the "preferred" enemy. Indeed, even
during the height of the war on terrorism, both the Pentagon's 2002
Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China and the
2002 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Security Review Commission painted
China as a clear and present danger. See also Joseph Perkins, "The China
Threat Has Not Gone Away," San Diego Union-Tribune, July 19, 2002; and
Chengxin Pan 329
Lev Navrozov, "China's Threat Grows as Everyone Watches Iraq": www.

newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/ 10/8/ 154035.
39. Steve Chan, "Relating to China: Problematic Approaches and Feasi-
ble Emphases," World Affairs 161, no. 4 (1999): 179. In this sense, this is in
fact not the first time that China is seen by the United States as an abnor-
mal, formidable other. When it emerged from its devastating civil war in
1949, shaken, vulnerable, and much weaker than it is now, China was never-
theless feared by the United States as a threat, for most people in the United
States were uneasy about the facts that even after receiving so much "help"
from "us," China still went its own way and that there was little they could do
to change that. See John K. Fairbank, China: The People's Middle Kingdom and
the U.S.A. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1967), pp. 107-108.
40. To counter the "China threat" argument, some scholars stress the
"inherent peacefulness" of Chinese culture. See, for example, Chenjian,
"Will China's Development Threaten Asia-Pacific Security?" Security Dia-
logue 24, no. 2 (1993): 193-196; and Li Shaojun, "The Peaceful Orienta-
tion of Chinese Civilization: From Tradition to Reality: A Response to
Those Who See China as a Menace," unpublished paper (Chinese Acad-
emy of Social Sciences, Beijing, 1998), pp. 1-9.
42. Huntington, note 37, pp. 29-30.
43. Ibid., pp. 30-31.
44. See Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 56-57.
45. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 203.
46. John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after
the Cold War," International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 12. See also Kenneth
N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,
1979).
47. R. B. J. Walker, "The Subject of Security," in Keith Krause and
Michael C. Williams, eds., Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 69.
48. Kurt M. Campbell, "China Watchers Fighting a Turf War of Their
Own," New York Times, May 20, 2000, p. B13.
49. Thomas J. Christensen, "Posing Problems Without Catching Up:
China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy," International Security
25. no. 4 (2001): 5.
50. James Chace and Caleb Carr, America Invulnerable: The Quest for
Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars (New York: Summit Books, 1988),
p. 12.
51. Quoted in James Der Derian, "The Value of Security: Hobbes,
Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard," in David Campbell and Michael Dillon,
eds., The Political Subject of Violence (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1993), p. 95.
52. Benjamin Schwarz, "Permanent Interests, Endless Threats: Cold
War Continuities and NATO Enlargement," World Policy Journal 14, no. 3
(1997): 30.
54. Betts and Christensen, note 12, pp. 19, 22, 26 (emphases added).
55. Samuel S. Kim, "China," in Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E.
Kanet, eds., Coping with Conflict after the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1996), p. 135.
56. Cumings, note 5, p. 39.

57. Robert Kagan, "China's No. 1 Enemy," New York Times, May 11,
1999, p. A23 (emph. added).
58. But as Owen Harries observed, when one did go to China in the
aftermath of the incident, one could immediately grasp why the Chinese did
not simply "accept" NATO's "accident" explanations (as Robert Kagan
strongly believes they should have done) . Harries wrote that when he passed
through Hong Kong, he "did not meet a person there - either Chinese or
Western - who accepted the accident thesis": Harries, note 1, p. 145.
59. Bernstein and Munro, note 8, pp. 15, 36.
60. Ibid., pp. 4, 11, 53 (emph. added).
61. Betts and Christensen, note 12, pp. 18, 28.
62. Yongjin Zhang, "Problematizing China's Security: Sociological
Insights," Pacifica Review 13, no. 3 (2001): 241.
63. Indeed, many U.S. analysts often claim to be the knowing ones on
the subject of China. For example, according to Lucian Pye, it is the West
that has long been able to know where Chinese interests lie, whereas,
unfortunately, the (irrational) Chinese not only are unable to recognize
their own interests but have frequently frustrated Western well-wishers who
want only to help them out. As Pye puts it: "From the time of Lord Palmer-
ston's efforts to get the Chinese to accept the conventions of Western
diplomacy, to President Bush's humiliating attempts to alter the behavior
of Beijing's current rulers, China seems impelled to reject the helping
hand and to act in ways that seem perversely self-damaging in the eyes of
those who believe they have that country's interests at heart": Lucian W.
Pye, "China: Erratic State, Frustrated Society," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 4
(1990): 56.
64. Said, note 4, p. 54.
65. For instance, most of China's neighbors, while presumably more
vulnerable to a "China threat" if there is one, do not share the U.S.
alarmist view. See Herbert Yee and Ian Storey, eds., The China Threat: Per-
ceptions, Myths, and Reality (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002).
66. The dominant U.S. IR literature on China does not, for example,
allow us to see the possibility that China's aggressiveness may have resulted
from its heartfelt vulnerability in the face of U.S. containment, rather than
from its increased sense of powerfulness. See Zhang, note 62, pp. 241-253.
67. Schwarz, note 52, p. 29.
68. Charles Krauthammer, "Why We Must Contain China," Time, July
31, 1995, p. 72.
70. The main components of Bernstein and Munro s management
policy include using most-favored-nation status as a leverage to pressure
China, supporting Chinese dissident groups, embarrassing China by lend-
ing sympathy to Taiwan and Tibetan exile leaders, maintaining and
upgrading the U.S. military presence in Asia, strengthening Japan and the
U.S.-Japan alliance, and, last but not the least, courting the younger, more
modern generation in China: ibid., pp. 205-221.
72. See, for example, Bernstein and Munro, note 8; Ross Munro, "Tai-
wan: What China Really Wants," National Review 51, no. 19 (1999): 45-49;
Denny Roy, "Tensions in the Taiwan Strait," Survivals, no. 1 (2000): 76-96;
Evan A. Feigenbaum, "China's Challenge to Pax Americana," Washington
Chengxin Pan 331
Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2001): 31-43; Allen S. Whiting, "China's Use of Force,
1950-96, Taiwan," International Security 26, no. 2 (2001): 103-131; Robert
S. Ross, "Navigating the Taiwan Strait: Deterrence, Escalation Dominance,
and U.S.-China Relations," International Security 27, no. 2 (2002): 48-85;
and Thomas J. Christensen, "The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deter-
ring a Taiwan Conflict," Washington Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2002): 7-21.
73. The Taiwan Relations Act considers "any effort to determine the
future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or
embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area
and of grave concern to the United States": www.taipei.org/tra/TRA-Law.
74. Quoted in Martin L. Lasater, The Taiwan Conundrum in U.S. China
Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000), p. 15.
75. Chalmers Johnson, "Containing China: U.S. and Japan Drift
Toward Disaster," Japan Quarterly 43, no. 4 (1996): 10.
76. David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-
China Relations, 1989-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
p. 366.
77. Song Qiang, Zhang Zangzang, Qiao Bian, et al., Zhongguo keyi shuo
bu (China Can Say No) (Hong Kong: Mingbao chubanshe, 1996).
78. Quoted in Johnson, note 75, p. 12.
79. Bernstein and Munro, note 8, p. 6. See also Andrew Nathan,
"China's Goals in the Taiwan Strait," China Journal^ (1996): 87-93.
80. Chih-yu Shih, "National Security Is a Western Concern," China
Journal^ (1996): 106-107.
81. James Lilley and Carl Ford, "China's Military: A Second Opinion,
The National Interest 57 (1999): 76-77.
82. www.uscc.ffov/anrp02.
83. Richard Lindley and Chris Oxley, Dangerous Straits, PBS Frontline
program, October 18, 2001: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/
china/etc/script (emph. added).
84. Whiting, note 72, p. 103.
85. Michael R. Gordon, A Dangerous Game, New York Times, April 3,
2001, p. Al.
86. Fox Butterfield, "China's Demand for Apology Is Rooted in Tradi-
tion," New York Times, April 7, 2001, p. A6.
87. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "A National Humiliation,
Weekly Standards, no. 30 (2001): 11 (emph. added).
88. Michael R. Gordon, Breathing Room tor laiwan: U.S. Weapons
Can Stave Off Threat," New York Times, April 25, 2001, p. A8.
89. Johnson, note 75, p. 15.
90. Elisabeth Rosenthal, Espionage? By the U.S.? China Prefers to
Stay Quiet," New York Times, January 23, 2002, p. A5.
91. Yongjin Zhang and Greg Austin, eds., Power and Responsibility in
Chinese Foreign Policy (Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2001).
92. Alastair Iain Johnston, "Learning versus Adaptation: Explaining
Change in China's Arms Control Policy in the 1980s and 1990s," China
Journal 35 (1996): 27-61.
93. Johnson, note 75, p. 12.
94. Quoted in Lampton, note 76, p. 356.

Pan - The China Threat in American Self-Imagination - The Discursive Construction of Other As Power Politics

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The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as

The "China Threat" in

We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.

ment or engagement is the best way to deal with it.1

Secondly, associated with the first assumption, it is commonly

*Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts,

and that their studies of China are neutral, passive descriptions of

I begin with a brief survey of the "China threat" argument in

is a discursive construction of other, which is predicated on the

The "China Threat" Argument

That China constitutes a growing "threat" to the United States is

a function of a Chinese strategy to target certain industries and to

For many, also frightening is a prospect of the emergence of so-

benign economic sense, ... in some quarters it evokes much more

increase their lethality through improvements in range, accu

that democratization is as likely to encourage international conflict

if Johnston's analysis of China's strategic culture is correct - and

Apart from these so-called "domestic" reasons for the "China

Like Germany a century ago, China is a late-blooming great

the threat is imminent or to which approaches might best explain

hegemonic leadership of the United States in the post-Cold Wa

The "China Threat" in the American Self-imagination

American Self-imagination and the Construction of Otherness

In 1630, John Winthrop, governor of the British-settled Massach

America is a remarkable nation. We are, as Abraham Lincoln told

This sentiment was echoed by Madeleine K. Albright, the former

wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of

we imagine ourselves locked in a special relationship with the

Yet, in a world of diversity, contingency, and unpredictability,

In the early days of American history, it was Europe, or the "Old

China is an object of attention not only because of its huge size,

Certainly, I do not deny China's potential for strategic misbe-

Indeed, the construction of other is not only a product of U.S.

The Discursive Construction of China

Having examined how the "China threat" literature is enabled by

ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced

Thus understood, by its very uncertain character, China would

If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate,

The upshot, therefore, is that since China displays no absolute cer-

By now, it seems clear that neither China's capabilities nor

disproportion between the keen attention to China as a security

The ''China Threat" Discourse

The discursive construction of the U.S. self and the "Chinese

threat" argument are not innocent, descriptive accounts of

is the politico-strategic question of "what is to be done" to make

as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong II, so that

This "neocontainment" policy has been echoed in the "China

In addressing the China challenge, the United States needs to

This is not to imply that the kind of perspectives outlined above

Strait missile crisis and the "spy plane" incident of 2001.

Theory as Practice 1: The Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis

In the eyes of many U.S. China watchers, China's approach to the

This confrontational policy serves not only to shore up Taiwan's

If such a scary interaction between the United States and China

Theory as Practice 2: The 2001 Spy-Plane Incident

Following the 1995-1996 missile crisis, mainstream China observers

the national security analysis may seem to be a more tangible

Clearly, the practical implications of this kind of representation

Rather than reflecting on how their new containment policy

China has changed, it would remain a fundamentally threatening

I have argued above that the "China

on the Vietnam War, a war fought by the United States to contain

Therefore, to call for a halt to the vicious circle of theory as