RISE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTAINMENT

BY US AND ITS ALLIES

 RISE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTAINMENT
BY US AND ITS ALLIES
 Introduction
 Rise of China – Engagement or Containment

The United States foreign policy toward the People's Republic of

China originated during the Cold War.

At that time, the U.S. had a containment policy against communist states. The leaked Pentagon Papers, the efforts by the U.S. to
contain China through
military actions undertaken in the Vietnam War.

President Richard Nixon's China rapprochement signaled a shift in focus to gain

leverage in containing the Soviet Union. Formal diplomatic ties
between the U.S. and China were established in 1979, and with
normalized trade relations since 2000, the U.S. and China have been
linked by closer economic ties and more cordial relations.
 RISE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTAINMENT
BY US AND ITS ALLIES
During the 2010s and early 2020s, there was a significant shift in
America's China policy.
In his first term as U.S. president, Barack
Obama said, "We want China to succeed and prosper. It's good for
the United States if China continues on the path of development that
it's on."
The Trump administration stated, "The United States
recognizes the long-term strategic competition between our two
systems." The Biden administration stated that previous optimistic
approaches to China were flawed, and that China poses "the most significant challenge of any
nation state in the world to the United States".
 RISE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTAINMENT
BY US AND ITS ALLIES
The presence of American military in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Philippines,
recently strengthened alliances with South Korea and Japan, efforts to improve relations with
India and Vietnam, and the Obama administration's 2012 "Pivot to Asia" strategy for increased
American involvement in the Western Pacific have been associated with a policy aimed at
countering China's growing clout.
The Trump administration designated China as a "revisionist power" seeking to overturn the
liberal international order and displace the United States, and called for a whole-of-government
approach to China guided by a return to principled realism.
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES
Instruments of containment

Military strategy

 The United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy has broadly been to use the
surrounding countries around China to blunt its influence. This
includes strengthening the bonds between South Korea and Japan as well as trying to get India, another large developing
country to help with their efforts

Trade War

In what would become the China–United States trade war, President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade
barriers on China in 2018 with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are "unfair trade practices"

The US says those trade practices and their effects are the growing
trade deficit, the theft of intellectual property and the forced transfer of American technology to
China.
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Belt and Road Initiative

Another high-profile dispute among the United States

and the People's Republic of China on the international
stage is the US alarm about China’s growing geopolitical
footprint in soft power diplomacy and international
finance and trade.
Particularly, this surrounds China’s
Belt and Road Initiative (formerly "One Belt, One Road")
which the Trump administration in particular as well as
those in Western media have labeled the initiative as
“aggressive” “debt trap diplomacy” and pointed to the
sale of an interest in a long-term lease by Sri Lanka in the
Port of Hambantota to a Chinese state-owned company
after Sri Lanka had defaulted on a loan to develop the
port
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Strategic alliances

US–Japan–Australia

Then-U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited Australia in March 2006 for the "trilateral
security forum" with the Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso and his Australian counterpart
Alexander Downer
 

US–Japan–Australia–India

In May 2007, the four nations signed a strategic military partnership agreement, the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue.
US–Japan–India

The three nations held their first trilateral meeting in December 2011
 RISE OF CHINA AND ITS CONTAINMENT
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US–Taiwan
Although the United States recognized the People’s Republic of
China in 1979, the US maintains de facto diplomatic relations
and is bound to it by the Taiwan Relations Act, which
ambiguously states, “the United States will make available to
Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such
quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a
sufficient self-defense capabilities".
US–Philippines

The relationship between the United States and the Philippines has
historically been strong and has been described as a Special
Relationship. The 1951 mutual-defense treaty was reaffirmed with the
November 2011 Manila Declaration.
US–South Korea
The US continues to host military bases in South Korea. The Chinese
believe the deployment of the US made Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD) missile system on the peninsula is not for the stated
purpose of protecting against a nuclear armed North Korea, but to
degrade the PLA Rocket Force from carrying out a nuclear second
strike in the event of a war with the United States. South Korea’s
decision to deploy the system led to a significant deterioration in
China–South Korea relations
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Rise of China as threat to US

 There is consensus amongst both the parties – Republican and Democrats and military established and media that
China is now a vital threat to the United States both economically and strategically, that U”S policy toward China has
failed and the Washington needs a new, much tougher strategy to contain.
 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China.

 More hostile attitude of US has been prompted after failure of US to woo China.
 First, engagement has failed because it did not “transform China’s internal development and
external behavior.

 Second China’s Foreign Policy is currently the most significant threat to US interests and to the rules-based
international order that the United States created after 1945.

 And third, a policy of active confrontation with China will better counter the threat than a continuation of the previous
approach
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES
 Formulating an effective response requires starting with a clear understanding of the United States’ China
strategy up to this point.
 There is consensus that China requires not only one engagement but combination of engagements and
deterrence.
 In the 1970’s US policy makers concluded that integrating China into the global economic and political system was
better than having it sit outside as resentful and disruptive.
 To check the rising power of China, US adopted a “hedging strategy” . Purpose of this strategy was check the
power of China and give its feeling of secure.
 This hedging approach was maintained by presidents of both parties.
 George W. Bush administration overturned decades of bipartisan policy and embraced India as a nuclear power,
in large part to add yet another check on China.
 Under President Barack Obama, the United States ramped up deterrence, expanding its footprint in Asia with new
military
agreements with Australia and Japan and nurturing a closer relationship with Vietnam.
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES
Trading policies

 Beijing has used open international economy to bolster its own state controlled economy system
 China owes much of its economic success to three fundamental factors:
o The switch from communist economics to more market-based approach
o A high savings rate that makes possible large capital investment
o And rising productivity.
 Challenges China presents
o Theft of intellectual property: That China engages in rampant theft of intellectual property is a widely
accepted fact
o China has not opened up its politics to the extent that many anticipated; it has in fact moved toward
greater repression and control
o Beijing’s gruesome treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, a
region in northwestern China, has created a human rights crisis. The state has also begun to use new technologies, such as
facial recognition software and artificial intelligence, to create an Orwellian system of social control.
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES
 Crossing the line
o Under Xi, China’s foreign policy has become more ambitious and assertive, from its pursuit of leadership roles
in UN agencies to the vast Belt and Road Initiative and the construction
of islands in the South China Sea. These moves mark a break with the country’s erstwhile
passivity on the global stage, captured by the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s adage
“Hide your strength, bide your time.”
o . Deng offered his advice to “bide your time” when
the country’s economy represented roughly one percent of global GDP. Today, it represents
over 15 percent.
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES
 China as threat
o To many, Beijing’s rise has sounded the death knell of the liberal international order—the set
of policies and institutions, forged largely by the United States after World War II, that
compose a rules-based system in which interstate war has waned while free trade and human
rights have flourished.
o China’s domestic political character—a one-party state that allows no opposition or dissent—and
some of its international actions make it an uneasy player in this
system.
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 Containment and its cost
o It is general belief in the West that containment of China will result in the collapse of China as it
happened in case of former Soviet Union
o Many analysts believe China is not Soviet Union, an unnatural empire that was build on the brutal
expansion and military domination.
o Analysts believe, In China, the United States would be confronting a civilization,
and a nation, with a strong sense of national unity and pride that has risen to take its place
among the great powers of the world.
o China is becoming an economic peer, indeed a
technology leader in some areas.

 Its population overshadows that of the United States, and the

world’s largest market for almost every good is now in China. It houses some of the planet’s
fastest computers and holds the largest foreign exchange reserves on earth. Even if it
experienced some kind of regime change, the broader features of its rise and strength would persist.
 RISE OF CHINA AND ITS
CONTAINMENT BY US AND ITS ALLIES
o The Pentagon has embraced the notion of China as the United States’ top “strategic
competitor.”
o On trade,
Washington’s aim is, broadly speaking, integrationist: to get China to buy more from
the
United States, invest more in the United States, and allow Americans to sell and
invest more in China.
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 China as partner instead of competitor
o Chinese participation in efforts to tackle global warming, nuclear proliferation, money
laundering, and
terrorism should be encouraged—and appreciated. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative
could be
a boon for the developing world if pursued in an open and transparent manner, even in
cooperation with Western countries wherever possible.
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BY US AND ITS ALLIES

•Q&A