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AT Appeasement

General 2ac material

2ac engagement now


Over 90 Current Dialogue Mechanisms SQO Cooperation solves the
Affs internal links
Xinhua English News 15 (Backgrounder: China-U.S. cooperation
deepens in various fields, 6/20, Xinhua News,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/201506/20/c_134343437.htm//AK)
Over the past few years, cooperation between the two countries has
continuously deepened in such fields as high-level contact, economy and
people-to-people exchanges with fruitful results achieved.
HIGH-LEVEL INTERACTION
At the invitation of U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping
will pay a state visit to the United States in September this year.
It will be Xi's first state visit to the United States since he took over the
presidency in 2013.
In November 2014, Obama paid a state visit to China after attending an AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation leaders' meeting in Beijing. The two sides
reached, among others, a historic deal on climate change.
In June 2013, Xi and Obama met at an informal summit at the Annenberg
Retreat, California, where they agreed on building a new type of majorcountry relationship.
In March 2014, on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in The Hague,
the Netherlands, the two leaders agreed to maintain close contact and jointly
push for the new type of major-country relationship.
In September 2013, the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to bilateral
cooperation in talks on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit held in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
ECONOMIC COOPERATION
As the world's two largest economies, the United States and China are
increasingly economically interdependent, with their trade volume hitting 550
billion U.S. dollars last year.
China and the United States are the second largest trade partner to each
other. U.S. investment in China has amounted to nearly 100 billion dollars,
while Chinese investment in the United States has also been growing.
Talks on a bilateral investment treaty have been accelerated, and the
negative-list negotiation also started in 2015, as both countries seek to
increase mutual investment, which only accounts for a tiny share of their
overseas investment.
The upcoming S&ED is a high-level dialogue that serves as the flagship in the
various dialogue mechanisms the two countries have developed. On the
economic track, the two sides will have in-depth discussions on such topics as
macroeconomic policy-making, trade, investment and financial reform.
PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE EXCHANGE
The CPE, along with the S&ED, is among more than 90 dialogue mechanisms
between China and the United States. It has become the most important

regular platform to deepen bilateral people-to-people exchanges and cement


understanding between Chinese and U.S. citizens.
As a main program of the CPE, the biennial China-U.S. Cultural Forum, which
has been held since 2008, has helped promote understanding and strengthen
ties between the Chinese and U.S. people. The fourth edition was held in
Washington in April.
In December 2014, China and the United States launched a new fellowship
initiative aimed at sponsoring 15 to 20 American professionals interested in
Chinese culture and China-related work to visit and study in China every year
through 2024.
The initiative is one of the latest additions to the programs under the CPE.
MILITARY EXCHANGE
In the military sphere, China and the United States agreed in 2014 on
establishing a new type of military relations to match the new type of majorcountry relationship between them.
The defense departments of the two countries have signed memorandums of
understanding on establishing a mutual reporting mechanism on major
military operations and a code of safe conduct on naval and air military
encounters.

2ac at: Yan


Yans data is limited and social psychology studies disprove it
Johnston, 11 - Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda
Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Department of Government,
Harvard University (Stability and Instability in SinoUS Relations: A Response
to Yan Xuetongs Superficial Friendship Theory Chinese Journal of
International Politics (2011) 4 (1): 5-29.
doi: 10.1093/cjip/por003
On the other hand, some of this literature in the psychology of expectations
and disappointment suggests that one might actually expect to see lower
levels of superficial friendship over time. For instance, work on the
relationship between disappointment, anger, and dissatisfaction suggests
that disappointment is a function of four factors: frustration at not being able
to achieve ones goals, surprise at being wrong, a sense of failure, and a loss
of self-esteem because of a proven inability to predict events, and, as
prospect theory suggests, because of a loss of expected benefits.5 Actors will
learn from these experiences to lower their future expectations which, in turn,
will presumably reduce the level of disappointment the next time round. This
may stabilize their relationships with interlocutors.
A variant on this is that after a series of disappointments actors will revise
their expectations in more pessimistic directions. Thus, one should see more
conflictual (though perhaps more stable) relations with interlocutors over
time.6 If so, this might predict an updating or learning process where, say
after 1999 or 2001, the US and China should move towards less optimistic
but more stable thinking about the relationship. (This would run counter to
Yans claims about the persistent and increasing instability in the relationship
over time.)
Another literature, however, might make predictions consistent with Yans
empirical claims about persistent instability. Here, however, the persistence
of superficial friendship is strategic, not a function of deeply internalized
delusions. There is evidence that people are more likely to concede to
another side if that other side expresses disappointment rather than no
emotion at all.7 Thus, it would pay for an actor to evince disappointment
strategically in order to encourage concessions from the other side.8
Still another literature suggests a different behavioural implication. Mere
dissatisfaction does not necessarily lead to proactive, conflictual, responses.
Rather, disappointment often results in passivity, based on a feeling of
helplessness, rather than a more aggressive or angry response.9
The degree to which exuberance and disappointment characterize a
relationship may also vary according to the complexity of the interaction. In
relationships where the range of salient issues is quite narrow, the effects of
exuberance and disappointment are likely themselves to be more variable.
More complex relationships, where multiple issues reside side-by-side, may

be more stable: exuberance in one issue area may be offset by more sober or
realistic assessments and every day interactions in another issue area.
Of course, exuberance, disappointment, and shattered expectations are
characteristics of the psychology of people and small groups, not nations or
states. So to test more observable implications, the research needs to go
more micro. The body of theory could be adapted to interstate relationships
to generate additional observable implications. What would we expect to see
in foreign policy discourses, in the arguments made or not made in the policy
process, in the actors involved in policy, and in actions taken unilaterally,
bilaterally, or multilaterally if a theory of disappointment were correct? Can
different leaders be classified according to their predispositions towards
exuberance and thus disappointment?
Yan does use events data to examine overall patterns of conflict and
cooperation in the USChina relationship as evidence for superficial
friendship-generated instability. But, as I will note later, these data are only
one place to look for confirmation (or disconfirmation) of the argument. And
these events data do not necessarily capture what is going on at the
individual and small group level where, after all, the effects of psychological
factors are most observable.
Security dilemma theory is a better explanation for instability in
relations
Johnston, 11 - Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda
Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Department of Government,
Harvard University (Stability and Instability in SinoUS Relations: A Response
to Yan Xuetongs Superficial Friendship Theory Chinese Journal of
International Politics (2011) 4 (1): 5-29.
doi: 10.1093/cjip/por003
Still, I think Yan might consider additional explanations other than the two he
dismisses in this article. An obvious alternative would come from security
dilemma theory.31 A security dilemma has the following features. Two or
more essentially status-quo-oriented states with more or less benign
intentions begin to doubt the other is similarly oriented. Each side takes
politico-military steps to enhance its security in the face of this uncertainty.
These steps are seen by Self as defensive and non-threatening to the other
sides core interests. Others, however, sees them as offensive and
threatening. The result is a spiral of insecurity and the mutual construction of
an adversary.
Security dilemmas are endogenous social processes. As they intensify, the
meaning of cooperative moves is discounted and the meaning of conflictual
moves is amplified. Each side comes to believe that it is more or less the
status quo state, but increasingly doubts that the other side is. At first, Selfs
response is framed in terms of maintaining its prior strategy, perhaps in
hopes that the other side is misperceiving the relationship. But Self then
begins to shift to a view that the other side is more revisionist than previously

thought, e.g. a shift towards a dispositional conclusion about Other. This leads
to a reassessment of the wisdom or appropriateness of Self's old strategy,
and the rise of voices in support of a more basic shift towards a more
coercive strategy. So a security dilemma can start out as a cycle of insecurity
between two essentially status quo states but end up changing preferences in
less status quo directions. In this regard, security dilemmas are socialization
experiences.32 This process also suggests that, contrary to Yans logic,
relations of enmity are not necessarily more stable than so-called superficial
friendship33enmity breeds security dilemma dynamics which are likely to
amplify and accentuate malign signalling and malign reactions. Although
relations will not zigzag between amity and enmity, the probability of conflict
increases exponentially or at least non-linearly.
To check whether security dilemma dynamics are increasingly characteristic
of the USChina relationship, we need to look for three basic pieces of
evidence. First, we need to look for evidence that Self discounts Others
cooperative behaviour and amplifies Others non-cooperative behaviour, such
that these behaviours are now interpreted differently from in the past. In
contrast, superficial friendship theory might suggest an equal exaggeration of
positive (exuberance) and negative (disappointment) information.

--1ar Yan wrong


Yans own data disproves the superficial friendship hypothesis
Alexandroff, 11 - Alan Alexandroff is a research director of the Program on
Conflict Management and Negotiation (PCMN) at the University of Toronto
(Stability and Instability Once Again Could it Be ? 3/15,
http://blog.risingbricsam.com/?p=489
Now Johnston in a rather persuasive and extended analysis of the events data
as they are currently constructed and characterized suggest that there
are two problems: first that some of the issues identified in the data set
might well be coded differently; and secondly there are, in Johnstons opinion,
important issues between China and the US that do not find there way into
the data set as currently constituted. Not to get too social sciencey,
Johnston concludes: In essence, the operationalization and measurement of
the dependent variable becomes problematic. And for good measure
Johnston notes the fitted trend taking the data from 1989 to 2008
increases over time and the annual absolute deviation declines in other
words, the US-China relations improve and volatility declines, which fails to
correspond with the superficial friendship hypothesis.
Yans data set has validity and reliability problems
Johnston, 11 - Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda
Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Department of Government,
Harvard University (Stability and Instability in SinoUS Relations: A Response
to Yan Xuetongs Superficial Friendship Theory Chinese Journal of
International Politics (2011) 4 (1): 5-29.
doi: 10.1093/cjip/por003
I do not want to suggest that Yans codings in Table 1 are necessarily wrong
and that alternative codings are right. But I think there are two problems
here. First, some issues that Yan codes one way could be plausibly coded
differently. Second, there are issues in the relationship that are missing from
the list. Thus, it is possible that his estimates of the instability in the US
China relationship have validity and reliability problems.
The following are some examples of what, to my mind, are problematic
codings. One is that Yan puts competing models of development (presumably
something like US capitalist democracy versus Chinese authoritarian
developmentalism) in the same class of confrontational interests as maritime
control of the South China Sea. Despite pundit talk of a Beijing Consensus I
do not think many in the US government, at least, see Chinas model of
development as much of a threat to the USA or vital US interests at the
moment.10 Although ideological differences contribute to perceptions of
identity difference between the two sides, the US government does not
appear to believe that these differences are spilling over into competition for
ideological influence in third areas. Indeed, I once heard then-US Deputy

Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, a quintessential neo-conservative,


argue at the Shangrila meeting in Singapore that North Korea should adopt
the Chinese model of development.
Another problematic coding is the placing of Uyghur terrorism in the same
category of conflicting interests as the Taiwan issue. I am not sure these
things belong together. The USA is very clear that it recognizes Xinjiang as a
part of the Peoples Republic of China. Although there are doubts within the
USA about Chinas designation of certain separatist movements in China as
terrorist, the USA has actually helped China in its fight against militant Islamic
violence by listing the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, for example, as a
terrorist group in 2002. The USA also reportedly gave Chinese officials access
to some of the Uyghurs held at Guantanamo. The USA also helped China
prepare for possible terrorist attacks against the 2008 Olympics by sending a
Nuclear Emergency Support Team with sensitive radiological detection
equipment to China.11 In contrast to the Xinjiang case, the USA does not
legally recognize the island of Taiwan as a part of the Peoples Republic of
China. And US commitments to Taiwans security, at this point, rest heavily on
the belief in the credibility of commitments to its formal allies in the region.
The US scepticism of Chinas use of counter-terrorism to clamp down on
religious and ethnic identity in Xinjiang is not, it seems to me, the same kind
of SinoUS difference as the US commitment to Taiwans security.
On the Iran issue, also classified by Yan as a conflicting interest, the State
Department cables distributed by Wikileaks reveal evidence of more common
purpose, though some differences in tactics. Dai Bingguo is reported in one
cable to have remarked to US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
that, China and the United States saw eye-to-eye on the Iran nuclear issue.
Nuclear states should reduce their nuclear arsenal with the goal of eventual
elimination and should work to prevent other nations, including Iran, from
developing nuclear weapons. However, China and the United States had
different considerations on how we advanced these goals.12 When China
supports UN resolutions criticizing Irans nuclear program or endorsing
sanctions, even if the message is diluted from the US perspective, should this
count as cooperation or conflict or something in-between?
In addition to some questionable coding,13 there are some interests missing
from Table 1. For instance, international shipping issues might be put on the
conflictual list, given arguments in China that it needs a navy precisely to
prevent/deter the USA from monopolizing Sea Lines of Communication
(SLOC). Concerning cultural interests, one could imagine adding to the list of
conflicting interests the issue of social valuesChinas efforts to promote
certain Confucian values versus US liberalism. Chinas efforts to reduce crossstrait tensions could plausibly be put on the list of common or
complementary interests, since both the USA and China benefit from a
reduced probability of war provoked by Taiwan independence. Similarly, the
subtle shift in US nuclear strategy under the Obama administration to
implicitly endorse a mutual deterrence relationship with China could be listed
under common or complementary security interests.14 The USA support for
the G-20 mechanism might be listed under common interests, since,

according to the leaked US State Department cables, a Chinese official once


expressed thanks to President Obama for his leadership in institutionalizing
the G-20, which had created a comfortable platform for countries like China
and India to play a larger role.15
Yans coding of the issues in Table 1 underscores his broader claim that the
USA and China cannot or are not willing to support each others core interests
in practice because these are, in many instances, in conflict with each
other.16 But here, too, I think the evidence is more complicated than Yan
implies. His conclusion underestimates the degree to which the USA has not
tried to undermine Chinas core interests. As defined variously by Hu Jintao,
Wen Jiabao, Dai Bingguo, and Foreign Ministry officials, Chinas articulated
core interests include: preserving the political system, national security,
sovereignty, and territorial integrity (preventing the separation of Xinjiang,
Tibet, and Taiwan), and sustainable economic development.17 On almost all
of these issues the USA opposed Chinas interests in the 1950s and 1960s.
But since rapprochement in the early 1970s, the USA has reversed its policies
180 degrees on these core interests. Currently, the USA does not actively try
to engineer the downfall of the Communist Party rule. It supports Chinas
economic development and Chinas participation in the global capitalist
economy (which actually boosts the legitimacy of the Communist Party).
Concerning Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity issues, the USA
legally recognizes Tibet and Xinjiang as integral parts of the Peoples Republic
of China. It does not currently support Taiwans de jure independence, and it
worked quite hard to prevent the Chen Shuibian government from moving in
that direction. Indeed, the Chinese government was very pleased at US
efforts to counter Chens push for a referendum on Taiwans entry into the UN
in 2007. The USA may not recognize some of Chinas current territorial claims
in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, but it also does not recognize
the claims of other disputants.
Yans assessment of conflicting interests is highly subjective and
impossible to prove
Johnston, 11 - Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda
Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Department of Government,
Harvard University (Stability and Instability in SinoUS Relations: A Response
to Yan Xuetongs Superficial Friendship Theory Chinese Journal of
International Politics (2011) 4 (1): 5-29.
doi: 10.1093/cjip/por003
There is a much deeper intellectual issue raised by Yans coding of interests,
however. This has to do with the question of where interests come from. If
one drops the notion of a self-evident national interest, or views interests as
domestically derived, or sees interests as multiple and at times conflicting,
problems with asserting the existence of an objective (and/or structural) clash
or convergence of interests become apparent. Yans discussion of US and
Chinese interests towards global financial and trade reform illustrates the

complexity of, and difficulty using, terms like conflictual or unfavourable


interests.19 On the one hand, US and Chinese interests are in conflict from
the perspective of one set of domestic interests, namely the interests of
those who want to remain in power. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders
do not want to risk the destabilizing effect on employment of a rapid and
large appreciation of the renminbi (RMB). US politicians do not want to be
seen as powerless to get China to import more American products. On the
other hand, when assessing US or Chinese national interests, why privilege
the interests of ruling elites? From the perspective of other domestic groups
such as consumers, one could make the opposite argument about national
interests. Chinese consumers would benefit from lower relative import prices
and thus share an interest with US politicians; US consumers benefit from
existing low Chinese import prices as these keep inflation down, and thus
share an interest with Chinas rulers. What is the national interest given
these complex economic relationships?
Fundamentally, the problem here is the sharp distinction, theoretically,
between perceived interests and certain underlying real or given interests.
Yans argument rests on this difference. If there were no difference, then
friendship would not be superficial because it would not be delusional. Thus
this gap between perceived and real interests can only exist because he
believes there are in fact real interests: A superficial friendship is one where
two nations imagine that they have more mutually favourable than
unfavourable interests, when the reality is the opposite [emphasis added].20
But he is unclear what these given, fixed or real interests are and where they
come from. As noted above, some of these interests may actually be
determined by political actors (e.g. the CCP wants to stay in power, therefore
Chinas interest is to keep its exports up against the US desire to appreciate
the RMB). But if so, then, it is hard to call them fixed, given, and independent
of perceptions of leaders. Perhaps, it is the materialist realist in Yan that
convinces him there are interests that all states have, and that these are
fixed and given and are sources of USChina conflict. But he does not really
tell us what these interests are or why they are independent of perceptions.
As a result, there is some blurring of the distinction between his own
subjective definition of Chinas interests, say, and the existence of some real
conflict that superficial friendship obscures. Constructivism (and neoclassical
realism), however, would ask: what is not real about perceived or imagined
interests, since it is (mostly) inter-subjective knowledge that drives
behaviour?
Indeed, I could make an argument that all of Yans conflicting,
confrontational, common, and complementary interests in Table 1 are based
either on choices made by political leaders or are so-deeply internalized as to
be unquestioned. It is therefore easy to imagine different people making
different policy choices or taking different interests for granted. For example,
in the category of common interests, it could be that denuclearization is a
common USChina interest only because neither side believes that a multipolar nuclear world is stable. Some smart people, on the other hand, do
believe nuclear multi-polarity could be stable.21 And indeed there was a time

in the past, in the 1960s, when Chinas leaders advocated nuclear multipolarity, presumably because this would help balance against and constrain
US power. Chinas assessment of the non-proliferation problem has changed,
however.
In the category of complementary interests, one could argue that bilateral
trade is a USChina interest because of the victory of free trade ideology in
both countries, indeed globally. There was a time, however, when a new
international economic order was the intellectually dominant argument
among many developing states. Now market ideology is deeply ingrained,
despite the fact that there are clearly absolute and relative losers from free
market economics.
As for conflicting interests, one could argue that the main reason arms sales
to Taiwan are on this list is because the Chinese Communist Party decided in
the early1940s to change its position on the status and importance of
Taiwan.22 Or because the USA believes (with less evidence than one might
think) that the credibility of its commitments are at stake in its relationship
with Taiwan.
Regarding confrontational interests, maritime control of the South China Sea
is on this list only because of a deeply ingrained linkage between territoriality
and sovereignty in Chinese concepts of interests. This linkage is a product of
a particular nationalist interpretation of Chinese history. It is not fixed, nor is
its intensity necessarily shared across all states. Nothing about geography,
material power distributions, or anarchy predicts to these definitions of
interests.
In short, because of problems in the coding of interests, Yans analysis may
be exaggerating the degree of instability in the relationship after the end of
the Cold War. And therefore Yan may be exaggerating the degree of
disappointment and shattered expectations on both sides.
Yans assessment of Chinese motives doesnt reflect official policy
Johnston, 11 - Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda
Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Department of Government,
Harvard University (Stability and Instability in SinoUS Relations: A Response
to Yan Xuetongs Superficial Friendship Theory Chinese Journal of
International Politics (2011) 4 (1): 5-29.
doi: 10.1093/cjip/por003
Yans ledger of shared and not shared interests is a mix of interests that
include officially announced ones, and those that he infers. An important
source of instability, he notes, is essentially a zero-sum relationship between
US desire to maintain global leadership and Chinas desire to regain its place
as world leading power.18 This is quite an admission about China's interests.
Since it is not official policy to challenge or replace the USA as the dominant
state in the system, and since there is no obvious evidence for or against this
being a deeply held interest among the top leadership, it is hard to know how
to assess this claim. The USA certainly openly refuses to relinquish its

leadership role. But does this therefore mean there is a conflict of interest
over hegemony? Not according to the Peoples Republic of China government.
Moreover, the USA officially supports Chinas rise, and thus does not see US
leadership and Chinas rise as necessarily zero-sum. So how are we to judge
where US and Chinese interests lie on this question? For those officially
articulated interests, how do we know they are authoritative expressions of
true intentions? And for those that are not officially stated but inferred by Yan
himself, how do we know these even exist as interests?
In short, I think that there is certain arbitrariness to the list of interests in
Table 1. If one plausibly recodes many of the interests in Yans list, or adds
missing interests not on the current Table 1, then the balance of common,
complementary, conflictual, and confrontational interests may change. This
affects the overall assessment of the degree of stability and instability in the
relationship. In essence, the operationalization and measurement of the
dependent variable becomes problematic. This, in turn, raises doubts about
the reliability and validity of tests of the superficial friendship thesis. One
suggestion would be that Yan develops explicit criteria for putting certain
issues on this list, for coding them in particular ways, and for keeping other
issues off the list.

2ac link defense


The plan doesnt prevent a shift to containment
Mattis, 15 - Peter Mattis is a Fellow in the China Program at The Jamestown
Foundation (U.S. Policy Towards China: Imposing Costs Doesn't Mean Ending
Engagement 9/10, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-policy-towardschina-imposing-costs-doesnt-mean-ending-13810?page=show
The idea of imposing costs or forcing China to face consequences for its
actions is easily misunderstood as abandoning the carrot for the stick as a matter of
U.S. policy toward China. On some issues and for some analysts, moving from
a cordial to an adversarial approach may well be the case in areas such as
South China Sea or cyber. Even these, however, are selective, based on
Chinese actions in particular areas, and focused on continuing the basic U.S.
policy of shaping the choices Beijing can make while encouraging a positive
course. Shaping Chinese choices necessarily requires a mix of incentives and
disincentives, but the latter can only be as strong as the will to act upon
them.
It is worth noting that even Michael Pillsbury in his harshly critical book on
U.S.-China relations, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to
Replace America as the Global Superpower, does not advocate replacing the
carrot with the stick. His policy proposals deal most strongly with better
assessing China, dealing with Beijing as it is run under the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), and avoiding being duped. They boil down to how
President Barack Obama characterized the way to run foreign policy: Dont
do stupid stuff.
The idea that imposing costs and consequences on China for actions inimical
to U.S. interests means abandoning incentives to browbeat Beijing seems
premised on the assumption that such consequences mean the beginning of
a containment strategy and the end of engagement.
Engagement is not going away. Suggestions of its demise are premature. If you
want to persuade or dissuade someone, the only way to ensure your signal
was sent, received, and understood is to meet face-to-face, keep dialogue
open, and ensure senior officials understand how the other side interprets
actions. Apart from that supercilious point, the U.S.-China relationship,
regardless of ostensibly shared interests, is not a fragile flower that will wilt at
the first frost.

2ac moderates turn


Turn plan bolsters Chinese moderates
Li, 15 professor, East China Normal University, School of International
Relations and Area Studies (Xiaoting, Dealing with the Ambivalent Dragon:
Can Engagement Moderate Chinas Strategic Competition with America?
International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International
Relations
Volume 41, Issue 3, 2015, DOI:10.1080/03050629.2015.1006728
Can US engagement moderate Chinas strategic competition with America?
This study indicates the answer is a qualified yes. Under unipolarity, a rising
state may face both incentives to accommodate the hegemonic dominance
and to expand its own strategic leeway against the latter. Consequently,
engagement may help the hegemon to promote cooperation over
competition in dealing with an ascending power, but it does not necessarily
overwhelm the structural incentives for the competition. Against this
theoretical backdrop, this study utilizes both qualitative and quantitative
research to demonstrate that Chinas reaction to American primacy has long
been marked by a profound ambivalence. Specifically, the findings suggest
that while US engagement has some restraining impact on Chinas
competitive propensity, Beijing will continue to hedge against American
hegemony, as its capabilities grow, by solidifying its diplomatic and strategic
association with the developing world.
The endurance of competition, however, does not imply that conflict is
inevitable. In fact, facing the reality of rising power, realist theory does not
uniformly predict catastrophe or recommend containment: To classical
realists, the future is always unwritten, and so wise diplomacy matters (Kirshner
2012:6566).13 Despite Chinas impressive development to date, for
example, it is far from certain that the PRC will achieve parity with the United
States in economic, military, and technological strength for the foreseeable
future (Beckley 2011). Many PRC elites seem to realize this too and hence
prefer to keep China committed to peaceful development, by working with
rather than against America (Bader 2012:122123; Sutter 2012:149150). As
noted recently by a renowned Singaporean expert, those doves still hold
considerable sway in opposition to an aggressive, nationalist approach in
Chinese foreign policy (Mahbubani 2014).
Under the circumstances, sustained US engagement helps to strengthen the
moderate Chinese groups and individuals by signaling that American intentions
toward China are not inimical and that there is much room for promoting
mutual understanding and benefit. Within this context, a belligerent Chinese
posture toward America will appear less appealing or defensible in domestic
debates. Engagement, in other words, reduces the likelihood of conflict by
preventing the formation of a strong consensus among the ruling elites of an emerging
power that the hegemon constitutes an unappeasable threat, a consensus

that is a foremost necessary condition for balancing or confrontational


behavior (Schweller 2004).

1ar moderates turn


Engagement on balance increases the risk of peace tensions are
manageable and just call for greater engagement
Hart 15 Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San
Diego, and director of Chinese policy at American Progress (Melanie,
Assessing American Foreign Policy Toward China, Center for American
Progress, September 29th, 2015,
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2015/09/29/122283/
assessing-american-foreign-policy-toward-china/) // EDP
The United States has pursued an engagement strategy toward China for
almost four decades. Regardless of party affiliation, every U.S. president
since Nixon has aimed to integrate China into the international system. That
decision has been and continues to be one of the greatest American foreign
policy successes of the post-World War II era. The U.S. engagement strategy
toward China and alliance relationships in the Asia-Pacific region made it
possible for Asia-Pacific nations to focus on economic development at home
instead of strategic competition abroad.
Now, nearly 37 years after U.S.-China normalization, China is an uppermiddle-income nation. Chinas economic growth is allowing it to expand its
military capabilities and foreign policy ambitions. That is a natural expansion.
Beijing is increasingly unwilling to sit on the sidelines and watch other nations
shape international norms. Today, instead of biding their time, Chinese
leaders are experimenting with new ways to use their nations growing
strengths to shape the international environment in Chinas favor. On some
issues, those efforts dovetail with U.S. interests, so Chinas new assertiveness
is opening up new opportunities for cooperation. Where U.S.-China interests
are not aligned, however, Chinese actions are reheating old frictions and
creating new ones. Those frictionsmost notably in the South China Seaare
triggering new debates in the United States about overall foreign policy
strategy toward China. Some U.S. observers discount the new opportunities
for cooperation and argue that because some challenges in the U.S.-China
relationship appear difficult to navigate, the United States should scrap the
entire engagement strategy and begin treating China as a strategic rival.
Those arguments are misguided.
The fundamentals of the U.S.-China relationship are the same today as they
were in the 1970s when the United States first reached out to turn this former
rival into a strategic partner. Chinese leaders still prioritize domestic
economic growth and stability above all other policy goals; they still view the
U.S.-China bilateral as Chinas most important foreign policy relationship and
want that relationship to be peaceful and cooperative. The Chinese military
still focuses first and foremost on defending the Chinese Communist Partys
right to govern the Chinese mainland and its territories. These fundamentals
have not changed. What has changed in recent years is Chinas capabilities
and the tools Beijing is using to further its domestic and foreign policy
interests. Those changes call for some tactical adjustments on the U.S. side.

Those changes do not warrant an abandonment of the engagement strategy


that has brought, and can continue to bring, decades of enduring peace and
economic growth for all Asia-Pacific nations, including the United States.
Xis China is prime for strategic bargains and conditions because of
his unique policy outlook
Rudd 15- Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 (Kevin, How to
Break the Mutually Assured Misperception Between the U.S. and China, The
World Post, 4-20-2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-rudd/us-chinarelations-kevin-rudd-report_b_7096784.html)//SL
2. Xi is a powerful leader the U.S. can do business with if it chooses.
Three concepts define how Xi Jinpings leadership differs from that of his
predecessors:
1. His personal authority
2. His deep sense of national mission
3. And an even deeper sense of urgency
Xis audacious leadership style sets him apart from the modern Chinese
norm. Both in personality and policy, he represents one part continuity and
two parts change. Xi is the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng (Deng
Xiaoping ), and possibly since Mao (Mao Zedong ). Whereas his
predecessors believed in, and by and large practiced, the principle of
collective leadership, Xi Jinping is infinitely more primus than he is primus
inter pares. As a Party blue blood, he also exudes a self-confidence that
comes from someone utterly comfortable with the exercise of political power.
Xi is driven by a deep sense of personal integrity, personal destiny and the
decisive role that he is to play in bringing about two great historical missions
for his country: first, national rejuvenation, thereby restoring Chinas place as
a respected great power in the councils of the world; and second, saving the
Communist Party itself from the cancer of corruption, thereby securing the
partys future as the continuing political vehicle for Chinas future as a great
power. Xi is both a Chinese nationalist and a Party loyalist. He is deeply and
widely read in both international and Chinese history, including an
encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Communist Party itself.
His core, animating vision centers on his concept of the China Dream
(zhongguomeng ) which in turn has two objectives: to achieve a
moderately well-off China (xiaokang shehui ) by 2021 when the
Party celebrates its centenary; and a rich and powerful (fuqiang ) China
by 2049 on the centenary of the Peoples Republic. Realizing the China
Dream, according to Xi, requires a second phase of transformative economic
reform. He sees no contradiction in prosecuting deeper market reforms to
achieve his national objectives, while implementing new restrictions on
individual political freedom. In fact, he sees this as the essence of the China
Model (zhongguo moshi ) in contrast to the liberal democratic
capitalism of the West which he describes as totally unsuited to China.
For Xi, China must seize the moment of extended strategic opportunity,
following 10 wasted years when necessary reforms were postponed, and

corruption allowed to run rampant. Chinas domestic policy needs are now
integrally bound up with the countrys foreign policy direction. In Xis
worldview, an increasingly rich and powerful China must now start playing
a much bigger role in the world. No longer will China hide its strength, bide its
time, and never take the lead (taoguang yanghui, juebu dangtou
), Deng Xiaopings foreign policy mantra for decades. China must now
pursue an activist (fenfa youwei ) foreign policy that maximizes
Chinas economic and security interests, and one that begins to engage in
the longer term reform of the global order. Xi speaks for the first time of
Chinas grand strategy needing to embrace a new great power diplomacy
with Chinese characteristics (you zhongguo tese de xinxing daguo waijiao
), in order to craft a new type of great power relations
(xinxing daguo guanxi ) with the United States. Xi, in short, is not
a status quo politician. He is the exact reverse. And in pursuing his sense of
national mission and personal destiny, he is prepared to take calculated risks
in a traditionally risk-averse Communist Party culture.
Xi Jinpings sense of personal and national urgency is animated by a
formidable, Confucian work ethic, which he also expects of his Party
colleagues and policy advisors. He is results-driven. He is frustrated by the
interminable processes of the Chinese bureaucracy, and its predisposition for
formulaic responses to real policy challenges. He is very much a man in a
hurry.
For these several reasons, Xi, unlike his predecessor, has the personal
authority and policy flexibility to be a potentially dynamic interlocutor with
the United States, albeit always within the framework of his nationalist vision
for Chinas future, and his definitive conclusions concerning the continuing
role of Chinas one-party state. When, therefore, Xi uses the term win-win
(shuangying ) to describe his desired relationship with the U.S., it should
not be simply discarded as a piece of Chinese propaganda. Xi does see potential
value in strategic and political collaboration with the United States.
In short, there is still reasonable foreign and security policy space for the U.S.
administration to work within in its dealings with Xi Jinping, although it is an
open question how long it will be before policy directions are set in stone, and
the window of opportunity begins to close. I argue that Xi is capable of bold
policy moves, even including the possibility of grand strategic bargains on intractable
questions such as the denuclearization and peaceful re-unification of the Korean
Peninsula. It is up to America to use this space as creatively as it can while it
still lasts.

2ac containment fails


Containment risks war
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, co-director of the Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for
International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 253)
A small handful of "realists do believe that regardless of its domestic politics,
a rising China will someday come to blows with the United States. Their brutal
prescription follows directly from this conviction: if a conflict is coming,
Washington would be well advised to try to delay or derail China's rise,
perhaps even going so far as to trigger a confrontation while the balance of
power is still tilted in its favor.16 At its furthest extreme, containment thus
becomes a prescription for preventive war.
Fortunately in the real world there is no chance that any American president
would follow such advice. An unprovoked shift from congagement to pure
containment would face insurmountable domestic political obstacles, but
there are sound strategic reasons for rejecting it as well. An unremittingly
hostile American stance would guarantee an escalating competition on all
fronts, raising the risks of war and possibly frightening some U.S. allies into
neutrality. Adopting an openly confrontational posture would confirm the
Beijing regime's most pessimistic claims about America's true intentions,
lending credence to those within it who support a more militaristic,
aggressively nationalistic approach to foreign policy and a less liberal course
at home, and alienating many ordinary Chinese who might otherwise have
been favorably disposed toward the United States. Reverting to containment
before it becomes absolutely necessary would also preclude the possibility
that history might eventually follow other, more gradual and less dangerous
paths. It would be a tragic example of the worst kind of strategic folly, what
Prussian foreign minister Otto von Bismarck (hardly a starry-eyed idealist) is
said to have referred to as "committing suicide for fear of death."

1ar containment fails


China is pushing back against containment now
Carpenter, 16 - senior fellow at the Cato Institute (Ted, How Beijing Is
Countering U.S. Strategic Primacy 6/21,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/how-beijing-is-countering-u-sstrategic-primacy/
In addition to its diplomatic maneuvers, the United States has been active on
the military front. The introduction of U.S. naval vessels into the South China
Sea, ostensibly to assert the right of freedom of navigation, was calculated to
send a message to Chinese leaders. Plans for deploying a theater missile
defense system also seem at least secondarily aimed at China, although the
behavior of North Koreas unpredictable regime was the primary reason.
But Beijing has not just passively observed these U.S. actions. Instead, it has
pursued a variety of countermeasures. One move was the attempt to
establish an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea.
Predictably, the United States and its principal allies defied that ADIZ by
conducting military flights without notifying Chinese authorities, but
establishing the diplomatic position was important, and it carried with it the
possibility that other, more neutral, countries would ultimately honor the
requirements. Notably, Beijing appears to be considering taking the same
step in the even more volatile South China Sea.
China has not ceded the field to the United States regarding attempts to
influence key strategic players. Beijing has tried to reduce tensions with
India, settling one of the border disputes with that country and initiating a
hotline between the two military commands to reduce the danger of
incidents. And trade between the two Asian giants continues to grow. China
has now emerged as Indias largest trading partner, with bilateral trade
surpassing $80 billion in 2015.
Beijing is even courting some formal U.S. security allies. Not only does
bilateral trade and investment with South Korea continue to grow, but Beijing
has skillfully exploited South Korean historical grievances directed at
Washingtons principal East Asian ally, Japan. That point became evident this
past summer when South Korean President Park Geun-hye disregarded
Washingtons wishes and attended the ceremony in Beijing marking the 70th
anniversary of Japans defeat in World War II. Park not only attended the
celebration, she was an especially honored guest, occupying the chair on the
dais directly to one side of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The other chair of
honor was occupied by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Not surprisingly, Beijing has attempted to strengthen ties with Moscow as
part of a strategy to counter Washingtons primacy strategy in Asia. That
approach has met with only limited success, but there are mounting signs of
policy coordination between Moscow and Beijing as Washington becomes
ever more intrusive militarily into regions close to the Chinese and Russian
homelands.

Beijing has taken two measures that demonstrate a growing intention to play
offense, not just defense. China now plans for the first time to deploy ballistic
missile submarines in the Pacific. That is a major change in Beijings
deployment of forces. Until now, Chinese leaders have been content with a
land-based, purely second-strike nuclear deterrent. Putting part of its
strategic arsenal aboard submarines both increases deterrent survivability
and creates the specter (however remote) of a first-strike capability.
The other component of an offensive rather than purely defensive Chinese
strategy is its growing diplomatic and economic (and possibly strategic)
penetration of Latin America. Premier Li Keqiangs high-profile visit to several
major South American countries in the spring of 2015 was a potent symbol of
that intention. But more important has been the deployment of Chinese
economic assets. China has now displaced the United States as Brazils
largest trading partner, and Beijing has been making multi-billion dollar loans
to various Latin American governments.
Washington is clearly worried about the influence that might accompany such
economic maneuvers. In March 2015, President Obama made an
announcement that surprised most observers, declaring Venezuelas leftist
regime to be a national security threat to the United States. What puzzled
experts is that this move came on the heels of Obamas policy of
rapprochement with Cuba and the previous willingness of his administration
(and its predecessors) to regard the behavior of Caracas as an annoyance
rather than a threat. What had changed?
One major development took place in January when the Chinese government
agreed to a multi-billion-dollar investment in Venezuela to help offset the
impact of the global oil price slump on that country. In addition, there were
reports in March of an impending $5 billion loan to Caracas from China, which
would have brought the cumulative total to $45 billion. Perhaps Obamas
announcement was just coincidental timing, but it seems more likely that it
was a recognition of, and a firm response to, a perceived Chinese geopolitical
foray into Washingtons traditional sphere of influence in the Western
Hemisphere.
All of this suggests that China does not intend to be a passive victim of U.S.
primacy. Beijing may operate at a disadvantage with respect to a geopolitical
power struggle against the United States, but it does have some assets to
deploy. And it fully intends to do so. Washington may find that its effort to
maintain a position of primacy in East Asia is more challenging than it ever
anticipated.

Containment Fails- Impossible to galvanize allies because of their


economic ties to Beijing
Carpenter 16-Senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest (Ted Galen,
Americas Doomed China Strategy, May 26, 2016, The National Interest,

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/americas-doomed-china-strategy16365?page=2)//SL
Two developments in the past month indicate that Washingtons mixed policy
of engagement and containment (or congagement) toward China has
begun to tilt more toward containment. The first development was the visit of
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to India in mid-April and the signing of a
bilateral cooperation agreement on military logistics. The other episode is
President Obamas just-completed trip to Vietnam and the announced lifting
of the long-standing arms embargo on that country. As usual, American
officials insist that the marked change in U.S. policy toward Hanoi is not in
any way directed against China. But such statements strain credulity,
especially when viewed in the larger context of U.S. warships conducting
freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea and bluntly reminding
Beijing of Americas security obligations to the Philippines under a bilateral
defense treaty.
The containment side of U.S. policy has gone from merely assembling some
of the necessary components, to be activated at a later date if necessary
(first gear), to the initial phase of activation (second gear). More emphasis is
likely to be placed on China as a serious strategic competitor, if not an
outright adversary. But developing any kind of a containment policy against
China is almost certain to prove hopelessly difficult. Despite the sometimes
inflammatory rhetoric coming from Donald Trump and some other China
bashers, the bilateral economic relationship remains quite extensive and
crucial. China is Americas second largest trading partner. In 2015, the United
States exported $116 billion in goods to China while importing $482 billion.
Disrupting that relationship would be extremely costly and painful for both
countries.
That point underscores one key reason why reviving anything even faintly
resembling the Cold Warera containment policy that worked against the Soviet Union
is a hopeless quest. Americas economic relations with the USSR were
minuscule, so there was little sacrifice on that front in taking a hardline
stance against Moscow. That is clearly not the case today regarding
Americas economic connections to China.
There is also the matter of assembling a reliable alliance against Beijing.
Conducting a containment policy against the Soviet Union during the Cold
War was feasible because (at least during the crucial formative stages)
neither the United States nor its key allies had much of a political or
economic relationship to lose with Moscow. The costs, therefore, of shunning
Moscow were minimal. That is clearly not the case with China. Most of the
East Asian countries, including close U.S. allies Japan and South Korea,
already have extensive economic links with Beijing. Indeed, China is Japans
largest trading partner, accounting for one-fifth of that countrys total trade.
It would not be easy for those countries to jeopardize such stakes to support
a confrontational, U.S.-led containment policy aimed at Beijing. Tokyo
undoubtedly has concerns about Chinas behavior in the East China Sea (and
about overall Chinese ambitions), but it would still be a reluctant recruit in a
hostile containment strategy.

Indeed, as time passed during the Cold War, even the containment strategy
directed against the Soviet Union proved increasingly difficult for U.S. leaders.
That was especially true after the early 1970s, when West Germanys policy
of Ostpolitik sought better relations with communist East Germany, and
indirectly with Moscow and the rest of the Soviet bloc. As connections
deepened between democratic Europe and the USSR, support for hard-line
U.S. policies began to fade. That point became evident in the 1980s, when
U.S. leaders attempted to persuade their European allies to reject the
proposal for a natural gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to Western Europe,
fearing that it would give Moscow an unhealthy degree of policy leverage.
Much to Washingtons frustration, key European allies rejected the advice.
If the United States attempts to mobilize regional support for a containment
policy against China, it will start out operating in an environment even less
conducive than the policy environment regarding the Soviet Union in the
1980s. Washingtons courtship might be welcomed by very small countries,
such as the Philippines, that are already on extremely bad terms with Beijing.
Larger powers, though, are more likely to see what benefits they can entice
and extract from Washington, without making firm commitments that would
antagonize China and jeopardize their own important ties to that county.
There is a final reason why an overt containment policy against China would
be a poor option for the United States. Several troublesome global or regional
issues will be difficult to address without substantial input and cooperation
from China. It is nearly impossible, for example, to imagine progress being
made on the difficult and complex issue of North Koreas nuclear and ballistic
missile programs without Chinas extensive involvement.
The United States needs to lower, not increase, its level of confrontation
toward China. That also means restoring respect for the concept of spheres of
influence. In attempting to preserve U.S. primacy in East Asia and the
western Pacific, U.S. leaders are intruding into the South China Sea and other
areas that logically matter far more to China than to America. Such a strategy
is likely to result either in a humiliating U.S. retreat under pressure or a
disastrous military collision. A containment strategy is a feeble attempt to evade that
reality.
Containment fails it doesnt assume the current international
power structure or lack of necessary support from East Asian allies
Kai 14 doctor of International Relations from the Graduate School of
International Studies, Yonsei University, South Korea, and is a lecturer there
(Jin, The US, China, and the Containment Trap, The Diplomat, April 30th,
2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/the-us-china-and-the-containmenttrap/) // EDP
Regarding the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute in the East China Sea, U.S.
President Barack Obamas recent position was loud and clear: And let me
reiterate that our treaty commitment to Japans security is absolute, and
Article 5 covers all territories under Japans administration, including the
Senkaku Islands. This confirmation of Washingtons military commitment to

Tokyo in a possible clash between China and Japan was called myopic by
the Chinese state news agency.
Given the current situation, even the slightest possibility of U.S. military
involvement may push Beijing to alter its expectations and act more
decisively and consistently regarding the enduring dispute, all while still
trying to prevent the situation from getting worse. After all, recent joint U.S.Japan military exercises demonstrated to China that the U.S. has already
prepared several operation plans for possible military assistance. In fact,
China is concerned not only about the probability of U.S. military intervention,
but also about the long-term impact of this reassurance toward Japan and the
complexity it may add to the current Sino-Japanese standoff.
Despite U.S. assurances, in Beijings view, a number of signs indicate that the
U.S. policy toward China intends to contain rather than engage. The
U.S. supports the Philippines on the South China Sea dispute, reiterates
Washingtons security commitment to Japan on the East China Sea dispute,
and has also agreed to sell more advanced arms to Taiwan. In almost every
dispute that involves China, the U.S. seems to automatically support any
party that has trouble with China, either directly or indirectly. Meanwhile, the
U.S. labels Chinas overseas economic activities as neo-colonialism and calls
Chinas territorial disputes with its neighbors evidence of expansionism. The
U.S. has also called China one of the biggest sources for cyber espionage
activities (although Mr. Edward Snowden told the world another story).
For the U.S., the rise of China just seems to be an uncomfortable fit with the
dominant, U.S.-led system. So the U.S. may rely on its still-dominant power
and its alliance relations (especially with its key partners) to sustain its
supremacy in and beyond the Asia-Pacific region particularly without
making substantial compromises to accommodate Chinas core
interests. By containing China with regard to Beijings core interests, the
U.S. is trying to gain strategic advantages.
Such measures and policies may put real pressure on China in the near
future, but they are risky. The fact is that the U.S. might have already been
hijacked by its military alliances in East Asia and thus finds it increasingly
difficult to handle its relations with both its traditional allies and a rapidly
emerging China. The U.S. faces a difficult situation: if it fails to subdue a
powerful China, it loses respect and trust from its allies. Hence, at least for
the time being, the U.S. is more willing to hold its ground, especially with
support and assistance from its traditional allies.
But this expedient makeshift can hardly solve the fundamental problem. A
rising China, like other great powers, needs strategic room for its survival and
further development. China surely needs to adapt to regional and global
arrangements, while the international community also needs to
accommodate or constructively engage this newly emerged great power.
In the 1970s and 1980s, improvements in China-U.S. relations contributed to
Washingtons strong and successful containment of the former Soviet Union
in Europe the traditional region of concern for the U.S. But the Cold War has
been over for decades. The same policy and approach will not necessarily
work for an emerged China under completely different international

conditions. And thats not even mentioning the challenge of confronting two
great powers (China and Russia) simultaneously. However, the current
situation suggests that the U.S. is in danger of falling into the containment
trap the more it loses its global supremacy and the more it expects support
and assistance from its traditional allies, the more obligated the U.S. will feel
to push forward hard-line policies toward China. Such containment might
work, given comprehensive and unconditional support from U.S. allies, but
reality is rarely that simple. Meanwhile, the U.S. should not underestimate
Chinas strategic determination and counter-measures to containment.
That being said, the rise of China and its disputes with neighboring countries
inevitably pose challenges for the long-established regional and global
arrangements. Hence Chinas rise may cause concerns. In view of this, China
needs to handle and adjust its diplomacy very cautiously to avoid
unnecessary misunderstandings and misperceptions. On the other hand,
particularly in East Asia, the current power structure and regional
arrangements were built either during the Cold War era, when there was
confrontation between two super powers, or after the Cold War, when U.S.
unilateral supremacy prevailed. During these two periods, China did not need
and could not afford sizable strategic room. Thats no longer the case today,
when China has already become a sizable great power and is still rising.
In the long run, the U.S. cannot contain China. Accordingly, rather than
relying on excessive containment or a check-and-balance approach, the world
and especially the U.S. might find more opportunities from deeper and more
constructive policies of engagement with China. Hopefully this engagement
can truly be a win-win game.
Containment ruins US soft power and increases Chinese influence
Kurlantzick 16 senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign
Relations (Joshua, Let China Win. Its Good for America, Washington Times,
January 14th 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/let-china-winits-good-for-america/2016/01/14/bfec4732-b9b6-11e5-829c26ffb874a18d_story.html) //EDP
Still, Obama administration officials see a battle for supremacy. As Clinton
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2011: Lets put aside the
moral, humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in, and lets just talk
straight realpolitik. We are in a competition with China in the Pacific islands.
So the White House has increased U.S. diplomatic representation in the
region, boosted aid dramatically and rhetorically pointed to a competition
between Beijing and Washington. It has done so even though most Pacific
nations are tiny economies and the U.S. Navy retains a
massive advantage over Chinas in speed, technology and basing throughout
the Pacific. The White House strategy inevitably diverts scarce U.S. diplomatic
resources from other parts of the globe while leaving island nations feeling
compelled to choose between closer ties with China or with the United States.
The result might embarrass Washington: Many of these nations might prefer
China for its lavish aid and possible investment.

Despite Chinas growing global influence, its image in many regions, including
in Asia, is still weak. In the past decade, its relations with many of its
neighbors have soured, largely because of its aggressive claims in disputed
coastal waters. The same Pew surveys that found favorable views of China in
Africa also showed that negative opinions were much higher in Asian nations
such as India, the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam, where 74 percent of people
had an unfavorable view of China. In Europe, Australia and parts of Latin
America, initial excitement in the 2000s about the impact of new Chinese
investment and aid has given way to decidedly mixed views among citizens
and governments about Beijing, including fears that China will not play by
trade rules, will steal technology and will make investments that offer little
benefit to local economies.
U.S. popularity, by contrast, has recovered from the lows of the Bush
administration, particularly across the Pacific. A 2014 poll of people in 11
Asia-Pacific countries, conducted for the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, found that nearly 80 percent of respondents, including those in many
countries that viewed China unfavorably in the Pew study, supported a more
robust U.S. economic and security presence in Asia a percentage that
would have surely been lower during the 2000s. But the exercise of soft
power rests on lasting positive perceptions, and it does not help for
Washington to cultivate strongmen such as Malaysias Najib or Kazakhstans
Nursultan Nazarbayev while promoting democracy elsewhere. It leads people
in these countries to see little difference between U.S. and Chinese foreign
policy.
Containment fails it provokes a nationalist backlash
Swaine, 15- senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace( Micheal, Beyond American Predominance in the Western Pacific: The
Need for a Stable U.S.-China Balance of Power, Carnegie Endowment For
International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyondamerican-predominance-in-western-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-chinabalance-of-power)//JS
The Unsustainability of American Predominance and the Chinese Response
While continued American predominance cannot, at present, be justified on
the basis of a Chinese drive for predominance, what of the widespread
argument in U.S. policy circles that such predominance is necessary
regardless of Chinese intentions, as the best possible means of ensuring
regional (and global) order? While deeply rooted in both American
exceptionalism and beliefs about the benefits of hegemonic power in the
international order, the notion that unequivocal U.S. predominance in the
Western Pacific constitutes the only basis for long-term stability and
prosperity across the Asia-Pacific is a dangerous, increasingly obsolete
concept, for several reasons.
First, it is inconceivable that Beijing would accept the unambiguously superior
level of American predominance that the many proponents of this course of
action believe is required to ensure long-term regional stability in the face of

a rising China, involving total U.S. freedom of action and a clear ability to
prevail militarily without excessive costs in any conceivable contingency
occurring up to Chinas mainland borders. The United States would never
tolerate such predominance by any power along its borders, and why should
an increasingly strong China? Given Chinas expanding interests and
capabilities, any effort to sustain an unambiguous, absolute level of American
military superiority along Beijings maritime periphery will virtually guarantee
an increasingly destabilizing and economically draining arms race, much
greater levels of regional polarization and friction than at present, and
reduced incentives on the part of both Washington and Beijing to work
together to address a growing array of common global challenges.
U.S. efforts to sustain and enhance its military superiority in Chinas backyard
will further stoke Beijings worst fears and beliefs about American
containment, sentiments inevitably reinforced by domestic nationalist
pressures, ideologically informed beliefs about supposed U.S. imperialist
motives, and Chinas general commitment to the enhancement of a
multipolar order. In fact, by locking in a clear level of long-term vulnerability
and weakness for Beijing that prevents any assured defense of Chinese
territory or any effective wielding of influence over regional-security-related
issues (such as maritime territorial disputes, Taiwan, or the fate of the Korean
Peninsula), absolute U.S. military superiority would virtually guarantee fierce
and sustained domestic criticism of any Chinese leadership that accepted it.
This will be especially true if, as expected, Chinese economic power
continues to grow, bolstering Chinese self-confidence. Under such conditions,
effectively resisting a U.S. effort to sustain predominance along Chinas
maritime periphery would become a matter of political survival for future
Chinese leaders.

2ac nationalism economy turn


Future economic decline will wreck Xis popularity it destroys party
support and forces him to stoke nationalism to maintain legitimacy
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations & ** chair and chief executive
officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chair of the Center for a New
American Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, and is on the board of directors
for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group (Robert & Kurt,"Xi
Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi
_Jinping.pdf)//SL
The impact of this situation on Xis political position is evolving. For now, Xi
remains strong, his opposition is divided, and nothing indicates that his
leadership is in jeopardy. Media reports suggest, however, that senior party
members were alarmed by the gyrations of the stock market in the summer
of 2015 and the countrys sputtering growth and are holding Xi accountable.
They are encouraging him to focus more on the economic situation than the
anticorruption campaign, which some contend slows growth by paralyzing
rank-and-file officials who fear that action on new projects could land them in
jail.30 If the economy continues to weaken, party elites who have suffered
under the anticorruption campaign may seek to exploit the situation to
undermine Xi, who now has the dubious distinction of presiding over the
slowest growth in thirty years and whose agenda and image are underwritten
by public support that could wane.
Xi will need to take clear steps to strengthen his position against rival elites,
fortify his public image, and shield the party from the economic downturn. To
that end, he will probably intensify his personality cult, crack down even
harder on dissent, and grow bolder in using the anticorruption campaign
against elites who oppose him. Above all, he will almost certainly choose to
intensify and stimulate Chinese nationalism in response to slower growth.
Ever since Deng dispatched communist ideology in favor of pragmatic
capitalist reforms, the partys legitimacy has been built on two pillars:
economic growth and nationalist ideology. Because the former is fading, the
latter may be the primary tool to support the edifice of the party and Xis
strongman image.

1ar nationalism economy turn


Xi is Pursuing nationalistic policy to divert attention from economic
woes
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign
policy & ** chairman and chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also
serves as chairman of the Center for a New American Security, is a
nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered
PLC in London, the Asia Group(Robert & Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage,"
Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi
_Jinping.pdf)//SL
Economic growth and nationalism have for decades been the two founts of
legitimacy for the Communist Party, and as the former wanes, Xi will likely
rely increasingly on the latter. Since 1989, the party has deliberately and
carefully laid the foundation for such a strategy through patriotic education,
censorship, government-backed protests against Japan, and relentless news
and popular media that have reinforced a nationalist victimization narrative.
As a powerful but exposed leader, Xi will tap into this potent nationalist vein
through foreign policy, burnishing his nationalist credentials and securing his
domestic position from elite and popular criticism, all while pursuing various
Chinese national interests. For example, an emphasis on territorial disputes
and historical grievances could partially divert attention from the countrys
economic woes and arrest a potential decline in his public approval; in
contrast, a visible setback or controversial concession on such issues could
undermine his standing with Chinese citizens and party elites. On economic
matters, concerns over growth and employment may lead China to become
increasingly recalcitrant and self-interested.
In the future, Xi could become more hostile to the West, using it as a foil to
boost his approval ratings the way Putin has in Russia. Already, major
Chinese newspapers are running articles blaming the countrys economic
slump on efforts undertaken by insidious foreign forces that seek to
sabotage the countrys rise. Even if Xi does not seek more combative
relations with the West, he will nonetheless find it difficult to negotiate
publicly on a variety of issues, especially when nationalist sentiment runs
high.
Economic decline undermines Xis popularity
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations & ** chair and chief executive
officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chair of the Center for a New
American Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, and is on the board of directors
for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group (Robert & Kurt,"Xi

Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,


http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi
_Jinping.pdf)//SL
Xi is exposed precisely because he sits at the center of all decisionmaking
and is visible to the public. He must address countless domestic challenges
for which he is now explicitly accountable, and a major misstep on any of
them could be costly to his political popularity and position. Without question,
the largest problem looming over Xis tenure is Chinas economic slowdown
and its related manifestations, including unemployment and stock market
volatility. As noted, Chinas economy, which had expanded at an annual rate
of 10 percent for three decades, is entering a new era of slow growth that has
forced the government to reduce its growth target to a record-low 6.5
percent. Xis challenge is to smoothly reorient the economy toward
consumption and away from exports and investment even as growth
continues to fall.
A new economic crisis will destroy Xis legitimacy
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations & ** chair and chief executive
officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chair of the Center for a New
American Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, and is on the board of directors
for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group (Robert & Kurt,"Xi
Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi
_Jinping.pdf)//SL
The real risk to Chinas economy, and to Xis fortunes, comes not from the
stock markets raw economic impact but from the damage done to the
governments credibility. Xis strongman image suffered in the wake of the
market collapse. His government had vocally encouraged average Chinese
citizens to enter the countrys stock market under the premise that good
returns would incentivize higher spending, and was embarrassed when those
investors were singed by the crash.24 The government then publicly staked
its credibility on a commitment to arrest the stock market decline, but its illconceived market manipulations and hasty currency devaluations were of
limited effectiveness. Eventually, China was able to reverse the declines, but
similar or repeated episodes will undermine the partys legitimacy.
Aside from the perceptual costs posed by such economic downturns, Xi faces
the considerable risk that a prolonged slowdown will directly affect the
welfare of the average Chinese citizen. The possibility of a hard landing
looms, and an economic wreck or a serious financial crisis could produce
years of prolonged stagnation and slow growth that could shake the party to its
core. Even absent such a disaster, if growth continues to slow, it will worsen a
number of internal trends. The labor market already struggles to absorb the

eight million college graduates Chinas universities produce each year. Bluecollar wages that had risen for a decade have been stagnant for well over a
year as layoffs continue in coastal factories, with labor disputes doubling in
2014 and again in 2015.25

Answers to China Rise

2ac China rise


China cant challenge the US the gap is too large
Brooks and Wohlforth, 16 both professors of government at Dartmouth
(Stephen and William, The Once and Future Superpower Why China Wont
Overtake the United States Foreign Affairs, May/June,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-andfuture-superpower?cid=nlc-fatoday20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1
&spMailingID=51424540&spUserID=MTg3NTEzOTE5Njk2S0&spJobID=922513
469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
But what is taking place now is not your grandfathers power transition. One
can debate whether China will soon reach the first major milestone on the
journey from great power to superpower: having the requisite economic
resources. But a giant economy alone wont make China the worlds second
superpower, nor would overcoming the next big hurdle, attaining the
requisite technological capacity. After that lies the challenge of transforming
all this latent power into the full range of systems needed for global power
projection and learning how to use them. Each of these steps is time
consuming and fraught with difficulty. As a result, China will, for a long time,
continue to hover somewhere between a great power and a superpower. You
might call it an emerging potential superpower: thanks to its economic
growth, China has broken free from the great-power pack, but it still has a
long way to go before it might gain the economic and technological capacity
to become a superpower.
Chinas quest for superpower status is undermined by something else, too:
weak incentives to make the sacrifices required. The United States owes its
far-reaching military capabilities to the existential imperatives of the Cold
War. The country would never have borne the burden it did had policymakers
not faced the challenge of balancing the Soviet Union, a superpower with the
potential to dominate Eurasia. (Indeed, it is no surprise that two and a half
decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, it is Russia that possesses the
second-greatest military capability in the world.) Today, China faces nothing
like the Cold War pressures that led the United States to invest so much in its
military. The United States is a far less threatening superpower than the
Soviet Union was: however aggravating Chinese policymakers find U.S.
foreign policy, it is unlikely to engender the level of fear that motivated
Washington during the Cold War.
Stacking the odds against China even more, the United States has few
incentives to give up power, thanks to the web of alliances it has long
boasted. A list of U.S. allies reads as a whos who of the worlds most
advanced economies, and these partners have lowered the price of
maintaining the United States superpower status. U.S. defense spending
stood at around three percent of GDP at the end of the 1990s, rose to around
five percent in the next decade on account of the wars in Afghanistan and

Iraq, and has now fallen back to close to three percent. Washington has been
able to sustain a global military capacity with relatively little effort thanks in
part to the bases its allies host and the top-end weapons they help develop.
Chinas only steadfast ally is North Korea, which is often more trouble than it
is worth.
Mutual interests, interdependence, and the power gap dissuades
China
Rudd 15- Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 (Kevin, How to
Break the Mutually Assured Misperception Between the U.S. and China, The
World Post, 4-20-2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-rudd/us-chinarelations-kevin-rudd-report_b_7096784.html)//SL
5. Armed conflict between the U.S. and China is highly unlikely in the coming decade.
Xi Jinping is a nationalist. And China, both the U.S. and Chinas neighbors
have concluded, is displaying newfound assertiveness in pursuing its hard
security interests in the region. But there is, nonetheless, a very low risk of
any form of direct conflict involving the armed forces of China and the U.S.
over the next decade. It is not in the national interests of either country for
any such conflict to occur; and it would be disastrous for both, not to mention
for the rest of the world. Despite the deep difficulties in the relationship, no
Cold War standoff between them yet exists, only a strategic chill. In fact,
there is a high level of economic interdependency in the relationship, which
some international relations scholars think puts a fundamental brake on the
possibility of any open hostilities. Although it should be noted the U.S. is no
longer as important to the Chinese economy as it once was.
However, armed conflict could feasibly arise through one of two scenarios:
Either an accidental collision between U.S. and Chinese aircraft or naval
vessels followed by a badly managed crisis; or
Through a collision (accidental or deliberate) between Chinese military assets
and those of a regional U.S. ally, most obviously Japan or the Philippines.
In the case of Japan, the report argues that, after bilateral tensions reached
unprecedented heights during 2013-14, Beijing and Tokyo took steps in late
2014 to de-escalate their standoff over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Hotlines
between the two militaries are now being established, reducing the possibility
of accidental conflict escalation. However, the same cannot be said of the
South China Sea, where China continues its large-scale land reclamation
efforts, where tensions with Vietnam and the Philippines remain high, and
where mil-to-mil protocols are undeveloped. Xi Jinping has neither the
interest, room for maneuver or personal predisposition to refrain from an
assertive defense of these territorial claims, or to submit them to any form of
external arbitration.
Of course, Xi Jinping has no interest in triggering armed conflict with the U.S.,
a nightmare scenario that would fundamentally undermine Chinas economic
rise. Furthermore, there are few, if any, credible military scenarios in the
immediate period ahead in which China could militarily prevail in a direct
conflict with the U.S. This explains Xis determination to oversee the

professionalization and modernization of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA)


into a credible, war-fighting and war-winning machine. Xi Jinping is an
intelligent consumer of strategic literature and would have concluded that
risking any premature military engagement with the U.S. would be foolish.
Traditional Chinese strategic thinking is unequivocal in its advice not to
engage an enemy unless you are in a position of overwhelming strength.
Under Xi, the ultimate purpose of Chinas military expansion and
modernization is not to inflict defeat on the U.S., but to deter the U.S. Navy
from intervening in Chinas immediate periphery by creating sufficient doubt
in the minds of American strategists as to their ability to prevail.
In the medium term, the report analyzes the vulnerability of the U.S.-China
relationship to the dynamics of Thucydides Trap, whereby rising great
powers have historically ended up at war with established great powers when
one has sought to pre-empt the other at a time of perceived maximum
strategic opportunity. According to case studies, such situations have resulted
in war in 12 out of 16 instances over the last 500 years. Jinping is deeply
aware of this strategic literature and potential implications for U.S.-China
relations. This has, in part, underpinned his desire to reframe U.S.-China
relations from strategic competition to a new type of great power
relationship.
In the longer term, neither Xi Jinping nor his advisors necessarily accept the
proposition of the inevitability of U.S. economic, political and military decline
that is often publicized in the Chinese media and by the academy. More sober
minds in Xis administration are mindful of the capacity of the U.S. political
system and economy to rebound and reinvent itself. Moreover, Xi is also
aware of his own countrys date with demographic destiny when the
population begins to shrink, while the populations of the U.S. and those of the
North American Free Trade Agreement economies will continue to increase.
For these reasons, the report concludes that the likelihood of U.S.-China conflict
in the medium to long term remains remote. This is why Xi Jinping is more
attracted to the idea of expanding Chinas regional and global footprint by
economic and political means. This is where he will likely direct Chinas
diplomatic activism over the decade ahead.
6. Chinese political, economic and foreign policy influence in Asia will
continue to grow significantly, while China will also become a more active
participant in the reform of the
global rules-based order.

1ar peaceful rise


China is incapable of threatening US global power geographical
boundaries, economic dependence, military inferiority
Thompson 14 Chief Operating Officer of the Lexington Institute, doctorate
in government from Georgetown (Loren, Five Reasons China Wont be a Big
Threat to Americas Global Power, Forbes, June 6th 2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2014/06/06/five-reasons-chinawont-be-a-big-threat-to-americas-global-power/#79fb13131b5c) // EDP
It certainly doesnt help matters when Chinese military leaders attending
international forums describe America as a nation in decline, and attribute
the Obama Administrations restrained response in Ukraine to erectile
dysfunction. However, there is no need to make the administrations Pacific
pivot the prelude to a new Cold War, because for all its dynamism China looks
unlikely to be any more successful in dethroning America from global
preeminence than Japan and Russia were. This is partly due to intrinsic
economic and cultural advantages America enjoys, and partly to limits on
Chinas ability to continue advancing. Those limits dont get much attention
in Washington, so I thought I would spend a little time describing the five
most important factors constraining Chinas power potential.
1. Geographical constraints. Unlike America, which spent much of its
history expanding under doctrines such as Manifest Destiny, Chinas potential
for territorial growth is severely limited by geography. To the west it faces
the barren Tibetan plateau and Gobi Desert. To the south the Himalayan
mountains present an imposing barrier to the Indian Subcontinent. To the
north vast and largely empty grasslands known as the Steppes provide a
buffer with Russia. And to the east stretches the worlds largest ocean (there
are over 6,000 miles of water between Shanghai and San Francisco). So
aside from the hapless Vietnamese who share the southern coastal plain and
Chinas historical claim to Taiwan, there isnt much opportunity for wars of
conquest on Chinas periphery. Ironically, Chinas disputes with neighbors
over the disposition of minor islands and reefs underscores how
little real potential Beijing has for growing its territory the way other powers
have.
2. Demographic trends. At 1.3 billion, China has the largest population of
any country. However, that population is aging rapidly due to the one-child
policy imposed in 1979. The current fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman is
well below the level of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population over the
long run, and also far below the birthrates seen in other emerging Asian
nations. What this means in economic terms, to quote a paper recently
published by the International Monetary Fund, is that within a few years, the
working age population will reach a historical peak and then begin a sharp
decline. The vast pool of cheap labor that fueled Chinas economic
miracle has already begun disappearing, driving up wages and leading some
labor-intensive industries to move out. In the years ahead, a growing

population of old people will undermine efforts to stimulate internal demand


while creating pressure for increased social-welfare spending.
3. Economic dependency. China has followed the same playbook as its
Asian neighbors in using trade as a springboard to economic development.
According to the CIAs 2014 World Factbook, exports of goods and services
comprise over a quarter of Chinas gross domestic product. But even if the
low-cost labor that made this possible wasnt drying up, the reliance of an
export-driven economy on foreign markets makes Chinas prosperity per
capita GDP is below $10,000 much more vulnerable than Americas. China
has sold over $100 billion more in goods to the U.S. so far this year than it
has bought, but that longstanding boost to the Chinese economy wont
persist if the labor cost differential between the two countries keeps
narrowing or Washington decides Beijing is a real danger to its interests.
China is so dependent on offshore resources, markets and investors to keep
its economy growing that it cant run the risk of really scaring its trading
partners.
4. Political culture. Because the Communist Party monopolizes power in
China, there is little opportunity for fundamental reform of the political
system. Party officials at all levels routinely leverage that monopoly to
engage in epic corruption. Bribery, embezzlement, kickbacks and property
theft are endemic. The Guardian reports that military posts are sold for the
equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds each, creating a vicious
circle as officers who have paid for their places seek to recoup the cost.
Favoritism towards state-controlled industries and well-connected
industrialists results in massive inefficiencies. President Xi
Jinpings crackdown on graft resulted in over 8,000 cases being investigated
during just the first three months of this year, suggesting a culture of
corruption reminiscent of New Yorks Tweed Ring. But Tweed was driven from
power through democratic processes, whereas Chinas political culture offers
no such solution.
5. Military weakness. That brings me to the subject with which most
defense analysts would have begun this commentary Chinese military
power. Military.com reports today that the Pentagon is out with its latest
ominous assessment of Chinas military buildup, which is said to
encompass everything from stealthy fighters to maneuvering anti-ship
missiles to anti-satellite weapons. Those programs actually exist, but the
threat they pose to the U.S. at present is not so clear. For instance, Beijing
doesnt have the reconnaissance network needed to track and target U.S.
warships, and if it did the weapons it launched would face the most
formidable air defenses in the world. Much has been written about
Chinas supposedly growing investment in nuclear weapons, but the best
public information available suggests that China has about 250 warheads in
its strategic arsenal, most of which cant reach America; the U.S. has
4,600 nuclear warheads available for delivery by missile or plane, and an
additional 2,700 in storage.
Beijings decision to sustain only a modest some would say minimal
nuclear deterrent seems incompatible with the notion that it seeks to rival

U.S. power. Until recently it has not possessed a credible sea-based deterrent
force, it still does not have a single operational aircraft carrier, and many of
its submarines use diesel-electric propulsion rather than nuclear power.
When these less-than-imposing features of the Chinese military posture are
combined with widely reported deficiencies in airlift, reconnaissance,
logistics and other key capabilities, the picture that emerges is not ominous.
China is an emerging regional power that is unlikely to ever match America in
the main measures of military power unless dysfunctional political processes
in Washington impair our nations economy and defenses. In fact, secular
trends are already at work within the Chinese economy, society and political
culture that will tend to make the Middle Kingdom look less threatening
tomorrow, rather than like a global rival of America.
Chinas rise will be peaceful cultural norms, focus on domestic
development, and reliance on current global order
Li and Worm 10 professors at the Asian Research Centre of Copenhagen
Business Schools Department of International Economics and Management
(Xin and Verner, Building China Soft Power for a Peaceful Rise, Journal of
Chinese Political Science, November 24th, 2010,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226526970_Building_China's_Soft_P
ower_for_a_Peaceful_Rise) // EDP
We argue China has a genuine desire for peace in her rise for several
reasons. Firstly, Chinese culture advocates moral strength instead of military
power, worships kingly rule instead of hegemonic rule, and emphasizes
persuasion by virtue and returning good to evil. Therefore, at the individual
level, even if there has been a victim mentality and retaliation sentiment in
populace, when promoted to a top leadership position, Chinese will tend to
behave like a benevolent sage, partly because of the cultural norm and partly
he/she may feel good by doing so. On 10 April 1974, Deng Xiaoping delivered
a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in which he declared if one
day China should...play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject
others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world
should...expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to
overthrow it. 3 Secondly, at the state level, Chinas priority in the important
strategic opportunity period is still domestic development so that China
would try her best to avoid conflict and seek peace. Thirdly, at the
international level, todays international system is characterized by economic
interdependence and nuclear weaponry. This reality makes a military or
confrontational power-shift/rise less likely or too costly for China to even
consider [4]. Ikenberry [5] argues that China not only needs continued access
to the current global capitalist system but also wants to protect the systems
rules and institutions because China has thrived in such system. We argue
even if China desires to reform the current world order which China perceives
imbalanced and unreasonable, China can be patient enough and adopt a
gradualist approach toward that end, just like what China did in its gradual
economic reform and opening up. Last but not least, Chinese history does not

support that kind of prediction that Chine will use non-peaceful means to rise
as well. By reexamining the evidences of diplomacy of the Peoples Republic
of China (PRC), Johnston makes a convincing case that China has become
more integrated into and more cooperative within international institutions
than ever before and behaviorally it does not appear at the moment that
China is balancing very vigorously against American military power or U.S.
interests as its leaders have defined them [6]. We also disagree with those
arguments based on power transition theory, according to which, the rise of
China will ultimately lead to Chinese power parity with the US [7], which may
cause structure-changing wars under certain circumstances. Theoretically,
the power transition theory posits that a rising power is likely turn into a
revisionist with two conditions: its capability and willingness (or
dissatisfaction with the status quo). Empirically, history has shown that an
international system with shifting power structure is fueled with conflicts and
militarized disputes [810]. Based on this logic, a rising China will change the
international power structure and eventually lead to conflicts. We argue there
is a missing point in such argument, namely, there should be another
condition: whether the rising power is willing to take unilateral and radical
action to reduce its dissatisfaction. Clearly, China appears to be a pragmatic
power which prefers modest actions
China is not aggressive government wants collaboration with
surrounding countries, routinely makes concessions for the greater
good, and is open to foreign policy reform
Li and Worm 10 professors at the Asian Research Centre of Copenhagen
Business Schools Department of International Economics and Management
(Xin and Verner, Building China Soft Power for a Peaceful Rise, Journal of
Chinese Political Science, November 24th, 2010,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226526970_Building_China's_Soft_P
ower_for_a_Peaceful_Rise) // EDP
On the other hand, we notice that Chinese government is not changeresistant and actually China has a plan to gradually reform its political
system. Ramo [28, p. 13] points out that the CCP is the source of most of the
change in China in the last 20 years. Yu [29] points out Chinese know how
demagogues can destroy countries in the name of democracy...China has its
own reform agenda based on Chinas painful historic experience. We support
Colleys viewpoint [30] that many people (especially in the West) tend to see
Chinas development as a glass half empty or largely focus on the negative
aspects of Chinas development. What those people neglected is the fact that
16 Starting since the end of Cultural Revolution before which the main
political ideology was class struggle, CCP has been continuously reforming its
political system and improving its domestic political values. Many new ideas
have been officially adopted by the CCP government, such as hearing system
in 1996, rule of law in 1997, civil society in 1998, developing political
civilization in 2001, human-oriented in 2003, protection of human rights and
protection of private property written in the national Constitution in 2004,
and building a socialist harmonious society in 2004. Colley [30] argues when
Chinese leaders like Wen Jiabao talk of putting people first and developing

a harmonious society, they tend to mean it. We argue China needs and can
have more and substantial improvement in domestic governance because
even within the current political system a one party democracy can still be
developed; and in the meantime, China needs to better communicate with
outside world what progress China has made and what the political reform it
plans to proceed. Internationally, China has consistently followed the
principles of peaceful coexistence and no-interference of other nations
domestic affairs which reward China a friendly and peaceful image in many
countries. China advocates that all nations regardless of size and wealth
should be treated as equal and their ways of life should be respected. China
maintains that peace and development should be the two major themes of
contemporary world and development should be the priority of developing
nations. China encourages SouthSouth cooperation to promote economic
development of developing world. China claims that all countries should
shoulder common but differentiated obligations to solving global issues such
as climate change and the developed nations should attend to the needs of
development of developing countries when it comes to international
obligations like reducing CO2. China pursues common security through
dialogue and cooperation17 and insists the UN Security Council should be the
core mechanism of international security. China proposes that political and
diplomatic solutions should be the primary means to international disputes.
China is devoted to improving the current unbalanced and unjust
international order in pursuit of a harmonious world. According to Wang and
Lu [16], in the reform era, China has adopted an independent foreign policy,
i.e., resistant to outside pressure, free from alignment, non-ideological, and
non-confrontational, which together with its good neighbor policy have made
China appealing. China has been sensitive to being seen as a responsible
stakeholder and behaving accordingly. For instance, in 1997 Asian financial
crisis, Chinese government resisted the pressure for RMB devaluation which
helped East Asia recover at Chinas own expense of detrimental economic
consequences in short run. In dealing with North Korean nuclear crisis, China
abandoned the ideological approach it had used in Maos time and played an
active mediating role in the Six-Party Talk. In order to promote peace, China
has also made unprecedented concessions in solving the territorial disputes
with its neighboring countries [32]. We see Chinas foreign policies and
principles of international relations as a strong source of Chinas soft power.
Although some scholars argue Chinas practice of non-interference might
jeopardize some western countries efforts to pressure some dictatorship
regimes to democratize their domestic governances, we argue China should
not compromise on this non-interference principle. The normal practices of
Western powers is to use economic sanction and arms embargo to force
changes in domestic governance, which can be argued to have little and even
negative impact on solving the very problems. Simply, many sanctioned
countries are those in urgent need of economic development and economic
sanction may bring humanitarian disasters to those countries. Having said
this, we nevertheless suggest China to be more flexible to work more closely
with international organizations and relevant western powers to find
alternative ways to solve those problems.

1ar - peaceful rise SIT


Social identity theory is the most accurate explanation for Chinese
behavior and it means Chinas rise will be peaceful
Lee, 16 - Department of Political Science, University of California, Los
Angeles (James Jungbok Lee (2016) Will Chinas Rise Be Peaceful? A Social
Psychological Perspective, Asian Security, 12:1, 29-52, DOI:
10.1080/14799855.2016.1140644 SIT = Social Identity Theory
By applying SIT to the analysis of Chinese foreign policy, this article has
attempted to achieve two goals. First, it aimed to contribute to breaking the
current stalemate in the debate over the rise of China, which has largely been
dominated by realist and liberal scholarship and thus has not been able to
adequately explain the many aspects of Chinese foreign policy that do not
readily conform to the rationalist framework. Second, it tried to further
develop SIT into an insightful framework for understanding international
relations, based on the premise that humansand by extension, statesare
so powerfully motivated by a desire for favorable social competition that they
often behave in ways that contradict their material and instrumental pursuits.
The key findings are twofold. First, in contrast to the prior literature,170 China
has consistently pursued social creativity as its grand strategy since opening
up its economy in 1978, instead of pursuing social mobility, social
competition, and social creativity in sequence. That is, per Deng Xiaopings
axioms and guidelines, China has strived to become a distinctive great power
based on socialist foundations, while for the most part accepting the
legitimacy of the contemporary global order. Second, even while resorting to
social creativity, China would not hesitate to enter military conflict in
response to an experience of disrespect toward its sovereignty and territorial
integrity, as demonstrated by its actions during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.
For China, as greatly sensitized it still is to the painful memories of the
Century of Humiliation, the feeling of disrespect is likely to encourage a level
of anger that negatively biases perceptions, reduces demand for information,
and shortens decision times, consequently increasing both the degree and
probability of risk prone and aggressive behavior on its part The answer to
the central question, Will Chinas rise be peaceful?, then, is in the
affirmative, with a qualification. That is, as long as China is abiding by social
creativity, it would err on the side of respecting the status quo world order
and maintaining peace, only occasionally voicing out its dissatisfaction with
unilateral imposition of Western norms, values and institutions. At the same
time, however, China is likely to resort to violence when others (especially
the United States) show disrespect toward its sovereignty, even if rational
calculations would suggest otherwise.

China is only hostile in response to disrespect of Chinese


sovereignty
Lee, 16 - Department of Political Science, University of California, Los
Angeles (James Jungbok Lee (2016) Will Chinas Rise Be Peaceful? A Social
Psychological Perspective, Asian Security, 12:1, 29-52, DOI:
10.1080/14799855.2016.1140644 SIT = Social Identity Theory
Overall, in all the three dimensions, the very fact that China was trying to
become a distinctive great power within the post-Cold War power and
authority structure dominated by the United States rendered its ambition
very difficult to achieve if an armed conflict were to break out over Taiwan.
That China had nonetheless taken significant military initiatives is a salient
point that further convinces us of disrespect as a powerful explanatory variable in
driving Chinas foreign policy during the conflict . It also shows the limitations of
relying strictly on realist and liberal insights to explain Chinas foreign policy.
Striking parallels
These lessons from the Taiwan Straits Crisis become especially salient in light
of the recently intensifying geopolitical tension in the South China Sea. On
May 21, 2015, the Chinese Navy warned the United States surveillance plane
P8-A Poseidon to leave airspace around the disputed islands in the South
China Sea.166 A Chinese naval officer told the aircraft, Foreign military
aircraft. This is Chinese Navy. You are approaching our military alert zone.
Leave immediately. And when the plane failed to heed the warningswhich
were delivered eight timesthe operator became frustrated, shouting the
words: Please go away quickly. . .You go! The drama follows an escalation of
tension in the South China Seas caused by Chinas construction of artificial
islands in the waters in an attempt to strengthen its grip on those islands,
reefs, and rocks that are disputed with countries like the Philippines, Taiwan,
and Vietnam.167 Defending Chinas action, Foreign Ministry spokesman,
Hong Lei, claimed Beijing has the right to monitor certain airspace and
maritime areas and safeguard national security, to prevent unexpected
incidents at Sea, adding that other countries should respect Chinas
sovereignty.168 The foreign minister, Wang Yi, was even more forward,
stating that, The determination of the Chinese side to safeguard our own
sovereignty and territorial integrity is as firm as a rock and it is unshakable.
169 Such a heavy emphasis on sovereignty and territorial integrity during an
escalation of tension draws eerie parallels to the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. It
clearly demonstrates that that China of 2015pained as it still is from the
memories of the Century of Humiliationis still ready to resort to offensive
measures in response to an experience of disrespect towards its sovereignty,
just as it was twenty years ago.

1ar - economic peaceful rise


Chinas economic development facilitates a peaceful rise
Ferchen 16 - Resident scholar at the CarnegieTsinghua Center for
Global Policy, where he runs the China and the Developing World
Program, Associate professor in the Department of International
Relations at Tsinghua University, Truman and Fulbright-Hays fellow
(Matt, China Keeps the Peace, March 8, 2016. Carnegie Center for
Global Policy, http://carnegietsinghua.org/publications/?
fa=63009//AK)
According to conventional wisdom, Chinese president Xi Jinping has launched
a more ambitious and geopolitically game-changing era of Chinese foreign
economic policy. And Beijing is certainly promoting new economic initiatives,
from the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to the
rollout of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. But Chinas international
economic grand strategy under Xi is not new. It is an extension of Beijings
long-standing Peaceful Development framework from the mid-1990s, which
asserts that Chinas own development and stability is contingent on shared
prosperity with its international economic partners, especially those in the
developing world. In fact, the Peaceful Development strategy has not been
uniformly successful, and Xis expansion of it is likely to create unexpected
challenges for China and the world.
Doubling Down
Recent analysis from U.S. think tanks and scholars links Chinas increasingly
assertive behavior in its own neighborhood with its foreign economic policies.
CFR Senior Fellow Robert Blackwill and Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate
Ashley Tellis argue that China has been systematically but stealthily building
leverage over its neighbors, including Washingtons Asian allies, through its
trade and investment practices, thus contributing to the pacification of its
extended geographic periphery. Such assertions conflate worries of Chinas
assertiveness in the South China Sea with a belief that the AIIB and OBOR will
contribute to Chinas geoeconomic prowess. This understanding does not do
justice to Chinas international economic policy track record, however.
In fact, Xi has merely doubled down on the Peaceful Development strategy.
This framework is based on a purported virtuous circle: according to this
theory, Chinas continued economic development depends on a peaceful and
stable domestic and international environment. And, in turn, Chinas
continued development will contribute to international peace, security, and
prosperity. Such a win-win framework stands in stark contrast to the views of
many outside critics, who worry about Chinese mercantilist trade and
investment policies at home and abroad. Since Xi came to office in 2012,
some of his efforts to display a bolder and more proactive foreign policy
approach have likely contributed to such mercantilist fears, yet Chinas
foreign economic policies remain fundamentally rooted in the conceptual and
policy guidelines of Peaceful Development.

China has continued to promote a community of common destiny in its own


neighborhood, despite regional tensions. The logic of such a community is
based on the proposed link between mutually beneficial economic growth and
enhanced regional stability and security. Chinas own identity as a developing
country, albeit one that is also a great power, underpins its promotion of
regional and global policies that will also catalyze economic development in
poor and middle-income countries. Here, newer initiatives like the AIIB and
OBOR are illustrative because they center on Chinese-led financing and
construction of infrastructure, something that is seen as both a precondition
for development and a key element in Chinas own rapid growth in previous
decades.

AT: Chinese economy


Claims of declining economic leadership overlook per capita GDP
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 59-60)
If we study the issue carefully, we find that the rumors of the death of U.S.
economic leadership have been greatly exaggerated. In emphasizing China's
remaining challenges and persistent U.S. advantages in the twenty-first
century, a diverse set of authors- Joseph Nye, Dan Drezner, Michael Becklev,
Robert Lieber, and Joseph Joffeall subscribe to a thesis regarding U.S.-China
relations pioneered by Harvard's Alastair Iain Johnston and Sheena Chestnut
Greitens. In 2009 the Harvard scholars asked by what measures China was
rising as a potential peer competitor with the United States.7 Even three
years later, by the most generous estimates of Chinese GDP (the purchase
power parity, or PPP, formula favored by the World Bank), the United States
economy was still 26 percent larger than China's.8
And even if the OECD is correct that continued growth in China and continued
malaise in the United States will allow China's GDP (measured by PPP) to
surpass that of the United States by 2016, this alone would not make China
an economic peer competitor with the United States.9 China's population is
between four and five times larger than the United States's, and in 2012,
even with the most generous PPP measures, its per capita income was less
than one-fifth that of the United States (by one measure, U.S. per capita
income was $50,700 and China's $9,300).10 At least until the 2008 financial
crisis, the gap in per capita GDP between the United States and China had
actually grown in absolute terms since the end of the Cold War. This is true
because, as in military affairs, China was growing from such a low starting
point. In order to turn domestic economic wherewithal into political clout on
the international stage, states need to mobilize wealth for national policy
purposes, usually through taxation. Per capita GDP is a good measure of how
easy or difficult it will be for any state to extract any amount of money from
individual citizens for arms, foreign aid, and so on. It is also a good measure
of the relative cost to citizens of income sacrificed when economic sanctions
that harm trade and investment are leveled for reasons of power politics.
Anyone who is familiar with progressive tax systems will understand this
basic concept. A $100 tax on a Chinese person earning $3,000 per year
carries a much larger marginal cost than a similar tax on someone earning
many times that much. The same holds true for the hundred dollars that a
Chinese citizen might lose if trade and investment relations were to break
down with Japan or Korea over a political difference.

The yuan wont challenge the dollar


Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 61-62)
Pessimists like Arvind Subramanian also like to cite any moves in the
economic sphere that undermine the dollar. For example, Subramanian
pointed to the recent phenomenon in which trade transactions among several
Asian and Latin American countries can now be settled in yuan (Chinese
renminbi). While certainly a sign of growing Chinese economic importance, it
hardly poses a challenge to the indispensability of the U.S. dollar as a global
reserve currency. The fact that settlement in yuan (RMB), still a currency that
does not float on international markets, is even notable only underscores the
true importance of the U.S. dollar in the international marketplace. That
importance actually might have grown with the financial crisis, as the dollar
has fared much better than its only possible convertible competitor, the euro.
I do not find the concept of economic dominance very useful in reference to
either China or the United States because economics is far from a zero-sum
competition. But if I had to cast such a concept in concrete terms, I might find
no better example than the U.S. role in the international financial system
after the financial debacle of 2008. Despite the revelation that terrible
policies and habits in the world's leading economy levied tremendous
economic losses not only on the United States but on the rest of the world,
public and private economic entities around the globe, including the Chinese
government, still came to the United States to buy Treasury bills and stocks
on Wall Street. Why? Because one has to put one's money somewhere, and
the strongest economy with the best and most stable institutions will be the
preferred safe haven in a storm, even in a storm created by that economy's
own faults. If there is such a thing as economic dominance, it must be the
ability for a country to remain the clear economic system leader even when
its own economy has taken such a terrible blow.

AT: Treasury bill sell-off


No Treasury bill sell-off it would wreck export-led growth
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 62-63)
This contradiction relates to China's much-vaunted surplus in foreign currency
reservesBeijing has become the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury bills
in the world. Whatever leverage this relationship might provide China, and it
is almost certainly quite limited because China would never have an
economic incentive to sell off the bills precipitously, the stockpile of Treasury
bills is also arguably as much a sign of economic weakness for China as it is
economic strength. China's continued disproportionate dependence on
exports as a job creator, its fear of domestic inflation, and its subsequent
need to "sterilize" its current account surplus with the world compels China to
purchase bonds in the United States and elsewhere. In this instance,
"sterilization" simply means shipping overseas the foreign reserves
accumulated through exporting more than is imported. The only other ways
the state could manage that problem would be to allow inflation or to allow
its own currency to revalue. Inflation could harm the economy and cause
social instability among the many urban citizens and government workers on
fixed incomes. Revaluation could cost China manufacturing jobs because it
would hurt the competitiveness of exports and increase the competitiveness
of imports. But China need not buy U.S. Treasury bills with this excess capital.
It could purchase physical assets with the money, invest in stock markets in
other countries, or shift from U.S. dollars to a wider basket of currencies. All
of this has happened to some degree, but there is little sign that China has
significantly slowed down its purchases of U.S. Treasury bills. The main
reason, to return to my earlier point, is that despite the financial crisis, and to
some degree because of it, the attractiveness of the U.S. bills as a relatively
secure and highly liquid safe haven (in comparison to other investments) has
only increased. To understand this, one has only to look at interest rates.
Compared to, say, Spain, the United States has to pay a very low amount to
borrow money because it is seen as a low-risk borrower.
The danger that China might sell off bonds precipitously to coerce the United
States appeals to many commentators, including Chinese ones. In 2010
nationalist commentators prescribed such a strategy following the
announcement of a new tranche of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. But the
government was wise not to take such advice. Indeed, the scenario makes
little sense. For example, Subramanian posits that China in the future might
hold $4 trillion in U.S. debt. If we grant him that, then we would also have to
assume that China will have remained overly dependent on exports for
continued growth and will not have broken its addiction to sterilization as a
means of keeping exchange rates and inflation low. But even if this proves to
be the case, why would China want to sell off a large initial portion of its

bonds for the intended purpose of hurting the U.S. economy, one of its
largest markets for exports? China would likely lose a huge amount of money
in the first round, when its remaining bonds dropped precipitously in value.
But more important, by damaging the U.S. economy and basically
threatening economic warfare, China would almost certainly have done
severe damage to a major export market and a source of foreign direct
investment. Reducing the overall purchasing power of the United States and
upsetting it politically would also risk reciprocal economic punishment.

AT: Chinese trade power


Economic self-interest prevents China from using trade power to
pressure the U.S.
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 63-64)
The last measure of Chinese dominance employed by pessimiststrade
powerreveals an outdated view of the political leverage that trade provides.
Subramanian argues that China can exclude U.S. companies from its markets
as a punitive measure in order to change U.S. foreign policy. Consistent with
Subramanian's claim, Chinese partners have reportedly withheld market
access to pressure foreign companies such as Ford Motor Company, General
Motors, Kawasaki, Siemens, and BASF to transfer technology directly or, less
directly, to build research and development centers adjacent to their factories
and offices in China, thereby training Chinese engineers who can then depart
to Chinese firms. The CEO of BASF, Jiirgen Hambrecht, reportedly derided this
practice as "forced disclosure of know-how" in a meeting with Premier Wen
Jiabao and Chancellor Angela Merkel.13 Individual American companies are
reluctant to go public with their complaints on this score lest they spoil their
relations with Beijing.14 One particularly bold CEO, GE's Jeffrey Imelt, did
publicly complain, albeit abstractly: "I really worry about China. I am not sure
that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful."15
But such Chinese practices are very different from Subramanian's concern
about China "offering or denying countries" access to markets for the purpose
of altering their foreign policy. First of all, China still generally exports more
than it imports (hence the current account surplus and resulting hoard of
Treasury bills). Moreover, it depends on those exports to produce jobs and
maintain social stability. If China tried to close off its economy to all imports
from a major economy, especially a market as large as the United States, the
inevitable retaliation against Chinese products would have enormous
ramifications for China's own export industries. By grossly violating its WTO
commitments, Beijing would also damage its attractiveness as a location for
foreign direct investment. This would only exacerbate a growing problem for
China, which is that other Asian countries are looking like increasingly
attractive alternatives for foreign investment. With its impressive rise in
wealth, China's laborers are demanding higher wages, making them less
competitive in certain industries than workers in places like Vietnam and
Bangladesh. Especially since China's own trade sector is heavily dependent
on foreign- invested firms, as outlined in chapter 2, China would not only be
shooting itself in the foot by sanctioning major countries like the United
States, it would be shooting itself in the head.

AT: Regional adventurism


No conflict with China and its surrounding countries laundry list of
reasons
Babones 15 comparative sociologist at University of Sydney (Salvatore, Is
China a Threat? The Devils in the Details, Foreign Policy in Focus, March
12th, 2015, http://fpif.org/is-china-a-threat-the-devils-in-the-details/) // EDP
What about regional conflict? Chinas growing military certainly sounds like a
regional menace. But a menace to whom? Here again the details get in the
way of the China threat story.
To the east, Japans government is responding to Chinese expansion by
boosting its own defense spending to record levels, proposing to change
its pacifist constitution to allow greater military flexibility, and making a
renewed push to resolve the long-standing Kuril Islands dispute with Russia. If
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe finally succeeds in making peace with Russia, that
would leave China and its ally North Korea as the sole focus for Japans entire
military capacity. Japan is a rich, technologically advanced country of 127
million people. It can look after itself.
For very different reasons, China poses little threat to South Korea. China
increasingly views North Korea more as a burden than as an advance column
for an attack on the South. And China has recently been courting South
Korean technology investment in order to reduce its dependence on Japan.
Political relations across the Taiwan Strait are inevitably dominated by
questions over the status of Taiwan. Every election in Taiwan sparks talk
about and fears of Chinese invasion. But no country in the world has staged a
large-scale amphibious assault since the U.S. landings at Incheon, South
Korea in 1950. For more than half a century, even American adventures
abroad have been small-scale (Grenada) or launched from land bases (Iraq).
The Chinese military will never have the capacity to invade Taiwan against
armed resistance not now, not later, not ever. It just cant be done in the
contemporary military context in which a single cruise missile can sink a
transport ship carrying thousands of troops. It makes no sense to worry about
something that is not technically possible.
The Philippines? Why would China want to invade the Philippines? Vietnam,
Laos, Myanmar? Ditto, ditto, ditto. China is involved in a plethora of minor
border disputes with its neighbors, but none of these involve core territorial
interests or serious legal claims that China (or most of its neighbors, for that
matter) have historically been interested in pushing. Theyre all frozen
conflicts that are unlikely ever to thaw.
Some pundits worry about the increasing Chinese presence in the Indian
Ocean. India may not rival China as a great power, but even India should be
able to contain Chinas ability to project power as far away as the Indian
Ocean and India has every reason to do so.
In short, its difficult to imagine concrete scenarios for major regional conflict
sparked by China.

AT: Chinese military challenge


China lacks warfighting experience
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 77)
In addition to having larger numbers of more advanced weapons systems
than China, the United States has a massive advantage in training and warfighting experience. Take the several hundred Chinese fighter aircraft, for
example. They are not only outmatched by thousands of superior U.S. planes,
but U.S. pilots receive much more training time on flying their aircraft than
their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, since the bulk of the PLA is still not
considered modern, the Chinese units that use weaponry deemed modern
face a challenge not shared by their U.S. counterparts: they need to try to
integrate with units of widely varying capabilities, a task that is not easy to
accomplish. Finally, while they may find fixes to these problems, the fact will
remain that China has not been in a major international conflict since 1979,
when Deng Xiaoping ordered the ill-fated ground invasion of Vietnam.
Chinese units performed rather poorly in that fight, but that is not as
important as the fact that only the most senior Chinese officers have any warfighting experience at all. The experience they do have from that fight is
largely irrelevant to most contemporary military challenges China might face.
This is particularly true at sea and in the air in the western Pacific. By
contrast, the United States military has been in harm's way somewhere in the
world in almost every year since the launch of Operation Desert Storm in
January 1991.
China lacks the US alliance system
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 77-78)
Besides technology and experience, allies represent one of the biggest
military advantages that the United States enjoys in comparison to China.
Michael O'Hanlon points out that the United States alliance system comprises
some sixty allies, which, if one includes the United States itself, constitutes
some 80 percent of global military spending.53 Similarly, in his book Liberal
Leviathan John Ikenberry has presented data comparing U.S. alliances with
China's security relations abroad to show the lopsided lead enjoyed by the
United States on this score. The United States has formal defense
commitments with sixty-two actors around the world.54 China only has a
formal alliance with North Korea and a very strong security partnership with
one other Asian country, Pakistan. It has defense cooperation and an arms
trade relationship with Russia, but mutual mistrust between the two makes it
very hard to label it an alliance or security partnership in the same way that

one could describe the U.S. relationship with South Korea and Australia
(alliances) or Singapore and Taiwan (security partnerships). These alliances
and security relationships give the United States more than just additive
power in a conflict; they provide permanent basing rights in many cases and,
in others, the right to use ports and airstrips for exercises and in certain
emergencies. In addition, they provide intelligence sharing and local
awareness regarding geography, weather, and the like that serve as a major
force multiplier for American power. While, for reasons offered in chapter 4,
this does not necessarily mean that the United States should cut its defense
budget or become complacent about the security challenges posed by a
rising China, it seriously undercuts arguments that China is quickly closing
the gap with U.S. military power or on course to dominate the international
system.

AT: Chinese control of SLOCs


China wont dominate surrounding seaway or airspace theyre just
as dependent on activity occurring there
Babones 15 comparative sociologist at University of Sydney (Salvatore, Is
China a Threat? The Devils in the Details, Foreign Policy in Focus, March
12th, 2015, http://fpif.org/is-china-a-threat-the-devils-in-the-details/) // EDP
China has become the bte noire of U.S. security policy, the new universal
enemy to replace the Soviet Union.
Its economic power and rapid military build-up, after all, make it a much more
credible long-term threat than Putins Russia or the Islamic State. When policy
pundits and military men want to spread alarm about the decline of America
and beat the drum for increased defense spending, their scary enemy of
choice is China.
Take James Jay Carafano, a retired military man and a policy pundit at the
right-wing Heritage Foundation who raises the possibility of a U.S.-China
Nuclear War. He argues at The National Interest that keeping the peace
between China and the United States requires significantly recapitalizing the
U.S. armed forces. This is necessary, he says, to assuage the doubts and
insecurities of Americas allies. He argues that Washington has to close any
gap in military power that the Chinese might think could be exploited.
Thats a lot of gap-closing.
Carafano identifies Americas key objectives in the region as maintaining
freedom of the commons (air, sea, space, and cyberspace) and limiting the
potential for large-scale regional conflict.
These certainly are U.S. interests. But are they U.S. responsibilities? And what
exactly do these two general principles mean in practice when applied to the
Asia-Pacific region?
It turns out that that a large-scale conflict in the region is much more difficult
to imagine than China hawks like Carafano like to pretend.
Staying Open for Business
The devil is in the details.
Take, for example, Chinas possible future capacity to dominate its adjacent
waters: the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea. An oftencited figure is that 40 percent of world trade (reportedly worth $5.3 trillion)
passes through the South China Sea. Throw in the East China Sea and the
Taiwan Strait and the total must be more than 50 percent.
Could a more capable Chinese army choke off that trade? Of course it could.
Any country can shut down sea lanes with patrols and anti-ship mines. But
nearly all of the civilian navigation in question represents trade to and from
China. Its hard to imagine any circumstance under which the Chinese
government would want to shut it down.
Ditto the airspace over Chinas near seas. Nearly all of the civilian aviation
through it consists of flights to and from China.

AT: Chinese carriers


Chinese carriers decrease Chinese sea power
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 74-75)
Finally, we have the much-publicized deployment of the Chinese aircraft
carrier for sea trials in 2012. On the one hand, tills is indeed a new capability
for the Chinese military, which has traditionally emphasized defense of the
homeland and the sea corridors near the Chinese coastline, where so much of
China's wealth lies. While significant, particularly to China's weaker
neighbors, a Chinese carrier can hardly be seen as a game changer that
closes an overall gap with the United States. After all, the Chinese bought
their vintage, Cold War-era carrier from Ukraine, hardly a leading military
power. Both the United States and its former enemy and now regional ally
Japan have had the ability to operate carriers since the 1920s! The United
States currently has eleven nuclear-powered carriers, and the massive and
sophisticated battle groups that accompany and protect them are fully
trained and in operation.
Merely having a carrier in service does not mean it is inviolable. The United
States has decades of experience from World War II through the Cold War in
tracking and destroying enemy carriers. In one World War II battle, Midway,
the United States sank four Japanese carriers, the Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and
Soryu. Fortunately, during the Cold War, the superpowers avoided the kinds
of direct military conflict that would entail attacks on carriers. But both sides
trained extensively for such missions, and in many ways carriers today are
much easier to track and hit than they were then. Given the massive expense
of the carriers themselves and the even greater expense of the carrier battle
groups that need to accompany and defend them, combined with the relative
ease with which they could be sunk by the United States, a realpolitik, zerosum analysis might lead one to hope that China would build many more
carriers, not fewer. Already many sophisticated U.S. defense analyses worry
more about the future vulnerability of U.S. ships to attack by Chinese missiles
and torpedoes than they do about any offensive threat posed by Chinese
carriers. One U.S. defense expert who generally frets greatly about trends in
China's defense modernization once half-joked to me, "When I dream happy
dreams, they are full of new carriers: Chinese carriers."

AT: Chinese cyberwar


US cyberwar capabilities are greater than Chinas
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 75-76)
Another area that gets a great deal of press is cyberwar. There is little doubt
that China has developed a large cadre of government-sponsored hackers
and cyberwarriors, and it is difficult to make the distinction between the two,
as the capabilities that allow one to penetrate any network and spy on it
often track very closely with the capabilities to disable and destroy that
network. James Mulvenon, a political scientist turned cyberanalyst in a U.S.
think tank, has done much of the best publicly available work on how cyber
attacks on U.S. forces could complicate U.S. military operations in the
western Pacific. In 2012 he presented some of his findings at Princeton
University, pointing out that while combat orders and other sensitive
communication would be done on classified systems that are much harder to
penetrate, U.S. military operations still rely on relatively vulnerable
unclassified systems for logistics purposes. In chapter 4 we will discuss how
such Chinese capabilities might prove very important in a coercive struggle
with the United States. But one does not need to conclude that China
somehow has a lead in cyber warfare capabilities or that the United States
has a particularly large deficit in terms of cyber vulnerability. It is difficult to
know from publicly available sources which Pacific country enjoys the
advantage in cyber warfare. The U.S. government rarely discusses U.S.
offensive capabilities, though public reports suggest that cyber attacks were
used extensively in Iraq, for example. There has also been widespread public
speculation about U.S. and Israeli cyber attacks on the Iranian nuclear
program in programs called Stuxnet and Flame. In 2012 General Keith
Alexander, the U.S. general in charge of Cyber Command, broke silence when
various reports had suggested that somehow the United States was
unilaterally vulnerable to foreign cyber attack. He said, "I can assure you
that, in appropriate circumstances and on order from the National Command
Authority, we can back up the department's assertion that any actor
threatening a crippling cyber attack against the United States would be
taking a grave risk."51 In 2013 he went further, stating that the U.S.
government believes U.S. cyberoffensive capabilities are the "best in the
world."52 Since the flight of National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden, many in the United States and China seem to believe that the NSA
has the ability' to penetrate large swathes of China's cyberspace. Since
penetration is the essential element to cyber attack, this would imply a
serious U.S. cyber warfare capability against China. Still, U.S. superiority on
this score, even if it exists as General Alexander suggests, does not
necessarily provide great safety or comfort, as we will discuss in chapter 4.

AT: Space war / ASAT attacks


No risk of ASAT attack from China
Coker 15- Professor of International Relations at the London School of
Economics and Head of Department (Christopher, The Improbable War, 15
January 2015, Oxford University Press, pp.166-167)//SL
The former UN weapons inspector Geoffrey Forden has published a
compelling scenario:
High above Asia, as the bars and clubs of Beijing begin to fill up at the end of
another work day, a US early warning satellite spots the tell-tale plume of a
missile streaking out of the wastes of Western China. Warning bells sound all
through the Pentagon. Tensions have been running high between China and
the United States, as the two countries struggle to resolve the latest
installment of the Taiwanese crisis. And China has had a run of
unprecedented activity in space: the past two days have seen China launch
four large missions into deep space, three within the last 6 hours.
Fortunately, a high resolution American spy satellite will be over that second
launch site within minutes, giving the US a unique ability to determine what
is going on. But even though tasking orders are given to photograph the
suspected launch site, none are returned. The satellite, code-named Crystal
3, no longer responds to commands. Within minutes, US Space Command
reports that four NAVSTAR/GPS satellitesused to guide American drones and
precision bombshave stopped broadcasting. Chinas space war against the
United States has started. (Forden, 2008)
In Fordens scenario a ChineseUS space war would not seriously
damage the capabilities of the U nited States. He argues that even if
every Chinese anti-satellite attack missile (ASAT) were to hit its targets and
the Americans did not respond despite evidence of an attack well ahead of
time, an attack is unlikely to cripple the United States as it would still have
enough space assets to mount a conventional counter-attack.
The capabilities needed for such a scenario to unfold in reality will not be
available for some years to come. Chinas only ASAT test in 2007 was aimed
against an obsolete weather satellite. The missile is likely to have tracked its
target through the use of an on-board telescope using visible light, which,
unlike US missile defence interceptors (which focus on the infra-red light that
the heat of a target emits), requires that a satellite is attacked in bright
sunlight. Indeed, even though the site from which the interceptor was
launched was cloaked in darkness, the target satellite was high enough to be
illuminated by the sun.

AT: Resource wars


No resource wars economic interdependence checks
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 40)
One of the key reasons is economics. Colonialism was never a particularly
smart economic plan for the imperial great powers, as they generally spent
more on imperial management and defense than they gained from
economically dominating their subjects (as opposed to simply trading with
them). But the information revolution that followed the industrial revolution,
combined with the diversification of natural resources such as oil and gas,
has made ownership of additional raw materials and land much less
important to the overall wealth and national security of advanced economies.
China does have preexisting disputes over energy resources with its
immediate neighbors. But even with that important exception, it is difficult to
imagine that China, Japan, the United States, and Russia will find themselves
fighting over previously unclaimed areas of the world for the purpose of
gaining monopoly control of the resources there.
Economic developments over the past 150 years provide major disincentives
for great power conflict, even in times of structural shift. The ratio of the
value of innovation and skill to raw inputs like natural resources and cheap,
unskilled labor has never been greater and is likely only to grow. Scholars like
Carl Kaysen had argued that advanced industrialization made war among the
developed nations extremely less likely because it could not be profitable for
the winner.4 The wars that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century
were an atavism of a preindustrial era in which aggression could pay because
the victor could enjoy more easily exploited booty, namely land, resources,
and a new source of cheap, menial labor. One scholar, Peter Liberman,
countered this thesis convincingly by analyzing German conquests in
industrialized parts of Europe, such as Czechoslovakia in the early phases of
World War II. In those instances, aggression provided Germany great added
wealth and military wherewithal. While Liberman's point is convincing that
some wars among industrial powers proved profitable and strategically
valuable for the aggressor, it is highly doubtful that the same logic would
apply to today's knowledge-based transnational production. In Liberman's
work, aggressors like Hitler's Germany merely needed to gain the
acquiescence of the conquered country's workforce.5 In a world of
transnational production, with logistics webs created by the need for on-time
delivery, the aggressor state would also need to persuade a diverse set of
foreign innovators, suppliers of key components, and logistics companies to
continue doing business with the aggressor after the invasion.

AT: Africa dominance


US-China interests in Africa arent zero sum and Chinese ties can be
explained by resource dependence
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 66-67)
China's Economic Inroads in the Developing World
Despite the common usage of terms like "a new scramble for Africa" in media
circles, the idea that China and the United States are competing for influence
there is extremely ill conceived. In my experience as a U.S. government
official, neither the United States nor the Chinese government viewed the
relations of the other with African countries as part of a zero-sum struggle for
global influence. And even if one were to accept such nineteenth- century
logic, China would hardly look like the dominant great power in either Africa
or Latin America. Of course, it is notable that China has become Africa's
largest trading partner since the financial crisis. But U.S. trade with the
continent is still large despite a sharp decline in the past few years.
As recently as 2008, U.S. trade with sub-Saharan Africa outstripped China's
by a considerable amount ($107 billion USD to $83 billion USD).22 Few
lauded U.S. "dominance" in the region at that time, nor would such a
conclusion have been warranted. Since then, China's trade with sub-Saharan
Africa grew by half and U.S. trade dropped by nearly one-third (in 2012
China's trade was $123 billion USD and U.S. trade was $73 billion USD).23
One reason for the increase in Chinese trade is that China's economy is
increasingly dependent on imports of foreign oil, of which sub-Saharan
African nations are a major supplier. In 2013 China surpassed the United
States as the world's largest net importer of oil.24 Still, China's exports to
sub- Saharan Africa have grown even more quickly than China's growing
energy imports from the region, in part because Chinese energy supplies
from Sudan were disrupted by the ongoing tensions between Khartoum
("Northern" Sudan) and newly independent South Sudan. Despite this
disruption, imports still constituted nearly 20 percent of the increase in
China's trade with the region since 2008,25 and the vast majority of the value
of Chinese imports from the region are in natural resources. Another, more
important reason that Americans should not panic about these trends in
African trade is that the change in the U.S. trade portfolio can be explained
largely by energy markets.
U.S. energy production at home has increased sharply, and U.S. imports of oil
have dropped sharply due to the shale gas revolution; thus, energy imports
from Africa have dropped precipitously. Overall trade with Africa is not a
problem. In fact in 2012, U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa actually
increased by 7 percent, faster than U.S. export growth to the rest of the world
(4.5 percent). But U.S. imports from Africa dropped 33 percent in the same
year-.26 Much of that drop was in the oil sector (oil imports fell 38 percent),

followed by precious stones and metals (imports of these commodities fell 25


percent).27 Declines in these imports hardly represent U.S. economic
weakness. Moreover, global U.S. firms like Exxon Mobil still produce a great
deal of oil in Africa even when their downstream destinations are outside the
United States. Most important, since U.S. oil imports from Africa dropped
because of development of the domestic energy market in the United States,
the decline should probably be viewed as a sign of U.S. economic strength.
The rhetoric about energy independence in the United States on both sides of
the political aisle is fundamentally misguided and misinformed. Oil is a
globalized commodity and no one can cut the United States off from supply
because of the diversity of energy producers and the power of the U.S. Navy.
And even if the United States produced all of its energy at home, regions like
the Middle East would still be strategically important to Washington because
the readily available energy resources there would still produce windfall
profits for its owners on global markets. Especially since most of those
owners are still states, it will still matter greatly to Washington whether the
regimes there are friendly or antagonistic to the United States and its allies.
Even now, the U.S. imports from the Middle East are limited, but the region is
still of great strategic importance.
For this reason, the bipartisan call for energy independence on security
grounds is a domestic political canard. But the opposite argument would, if
possible, be even more absurd. A country certainly does not become more
influential on the international stage by importing more energy and natural
resources from any given country or region. No one would argue that we
would improve our political power in places like the Middle East or Venezuela
by buying more oil from those places. But when Chinese energy imports
increase and U.S. imports drop, some analysts begin to worry about Chinese
"dominance." Suddenly, Chinese energy dependence becomes a source of
national power and U.S. energy independence a cause of national weakness.
This makes no sense.

Trade ties dont shape political influence


Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 68-69)
As my colleague, Mr. Swan, pointed out that day, if we consider commonly
used instruments like Chinese government preferential financing for Chinese
companies operating in countries like Angola or Nigeria or those in China
exporting to Africa, the combined numbers for Chinese aid, investment, or
both would be much higher. But even if we grant China much higher figures,
it is not entirely clear that China would gain great political leverage because
of it. Many of these countries have diverse outlets for their natural resources,
for example, and the prices are still largely determined by international
market forces, not by special deals with China or anyone else.

Even when the importing country enjoys something close to a monopoly


position as a purchaser of globally available resources from any given
supplier, the purchaser does not necessarily enjoy a privileged political
position in the relationship. Witness the U.S. relationship with Venezuela. The
United States has long been by far the largest purchaser of Venezuelan oil,
and oil is by far Venezuela's most valuable economic asset. Moreover, much
of the Venezuelan crude is refined in the United States before it returns to
Venezuela or is sold elsewhere as combustible fuel. But Washington not only
does not dominate the country, it held little sway over its obstreperous and
outwardly anti-American leadership under Hugo Chavez, who famously
referred to George W. Bush as the devil, praised Iran, and maintained close
ties to Castro's Cuba. Realizing this when I was at the State Department, I
often chuckled when I saw ominous news reports regarding the political
implications of new energy deals that China was cutting with Venezuela.
These seemed to be the same kind of credit-for- energy swaps that China had
signed in Africa. The prediction was that Venezuela would be able to diversify
its export markets and increase oil flows to China. The implication was that
this would give China great political influence in America's backyard. Indeed,
Venezuelan exports to China eventually did increase. In 2012 Venezuela
reported that exports of oil to China increased 30 percent, to 600,000 barrels
per day. U.S. official estimates put the figure at a much lower 260,000 barrels
of crude per day (for 2013).34 But even the higher Venezuelan figure is
smaller than the flow of crude to the United States, which even at half of
what it was in the late 1990s was still over 800,000 barrels per day in 2012
and 2013. Furthermore, Venezuela still depends on U.S. refineries. It has no
parallel in its relationship with China 35 The more important point is that,
since Washington has had so little influence on Venezuelan policies at home
or abroad even when it was an unrivaled leader in Venezuelan energy
markets, it is hard to imagine that somehow the United States lost and China
gained significant influence in the process of increased Venezuelan exports to
China. If eclipsing the U.S. in oil purchases from Venezuela buys China as
much influence in Venezuela as we enjoyed during the Bush administration,
we can only wish Beijing the best of luck with that.

AT: Latin America dominance


No threat to US trade with Latin America
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and
War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, p. 69-71
China's overall economic relationship with Latin America has also deepened
significantly since the 1990s. Again, in my experience the U.S. government
tends not to view these relationships as a zero-sum struggle. But even if we
adopt the zero-sum optic as an exercise, the U.S. position would still seem
very secure. U.S. trade with Latin America outstrips Chinese trade by a very
wide margin. In 2012 China's trade with Latin America was 30 percent of U.S.
trade with the region (Chinese trade was $258 billion USD; the United States'
was $856 billion USD).37 Chinese investment numbers have been growing
FDI in 2010 totaled $10.5 billion USD. But those numbers are still dwarfed by
U.S. investments, which according to the OECD amounted to over $44.5
billion in that year.38 Moreover, by far the biggest target for Chinese
"investment" in Latin America still seems to be the Cayman Islands, with the
British Virgin Islands in second place. According to a U.S.-China Economic and
Security Review Commission report, in 2009 73 percent of Chinese
investment to Latin America went to the Caymans and 22 percent to the
British Virgin Islands.39 For 2010, if we subtract $3.5 billion USD investment
to the Caymans and $6.1 billion USD to the British Virgin Islands, Chinese FDI
to Latin America is only $0.9 billion for that year, or only 1.3 percent of
China's global FDI.40 This suggests that a big portion of the Chinese money is
being reinvested back into China as faux foreign direct investment by
Chinese entities that want the tax and other benefits enjoyed by foreigninvested firms. Some of the money flowing through the Caymans might also
be a shelter for ill-gotten gains on the mainland. Of course, a large piece of
the U.S. investment in the region is also to places like the Caymans and
Suriname, most likely for tax haven purposes, but even accounting for this
phenomenon, U.S. investment in the region for more productive purposes is
still many times higher than the Chinese figures. For example, in 2012 U.S.
net investment in two major South American economies, Brazil and
Argentina, was over $12 billion USD.41
On the trade front, as is the case with the United States in Venezuela, the
Chinese imports from the region are largely raw materials and agricultural
products, commodities that have globally determined prices. (The productive
parts of Chinese investment in the region are also heavily skewed toward
extracting such raw materials.) As is demonstrated by the U.S.- Venezuela
case, the purchase of such commodities does not give the buyer inordinate
political power over the seller, which has many potential outlets for sale of its
products in a global marketplace. It is difficult to see how China could use its
newfound position in these markets to do serious damage to the American

economic interests in the region, let alone to create leverage to harm U.S.
national security interests in the Western Hemisphere.

Impact answers

AT: Hegemony impacts


Their laundry list impacts are exaggerated and hegemony doesnt
solve them
Mearshimer and Walt 16 - JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago. STEPHEN M. WALT is Robert and Rene Belfer
Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
(John and Stephen, The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior
U.S. Grand Strategy, Foreign Affairs,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-06-13/caseoffshore-balancing//AK)
Defenders of liberal hegemony marshal a number of unpersuasive arguments
to make their case. One familiar claim is that only vigorous U.S. leadership
can keep order around the globe. But global leadership is not an end in itself;
it is desirable only insofar as it benefits the United States directly.
One might further argue that U.S. leadership is necessary to overcome the
collective-action problem of local actors failing to balance against a potential
hegemon. Offshore balancing recognizes this danger, however, and calls for
Washington to step in if needed. Nor does it prohibit Washington from giving
friendly states in the key regions advice or material aid.
Other defenders of liberal hegemony argue that U.S. leadership is necessary
to deal with new, transnational threats that arise from failed states, terrorism,
criminal networks, refugee flows, and the like. Not only do the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans offer inadequate protection against these dangers, they claim,
but modern military technology also makes it easier for the United States to
project power around the world and address them. Todays global village, in
short, is more dangerous yet easier to manage.
This view exaggerates these threats and overstates Washingtons ability to
eliminate them. Crime, terrorism, and similar problems can be a nuisance,
but they are hardly existential threats and rarely lend themselves to military
solutions. Indeed, constant interference in the affairs of other statesand
especially repeated military interventionsgenerates local resentment and
fosters corruption, thereby making these transnational dangers worse. The
long-term solution to the problems can only be competent local governance,
not heavy-handed U.S. efforts to police the world.
US predominance in Asia isnt sustainable
Swaine, 15- senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace( Micheal, Beyond American Predominance in the Western Pacific: The
Need for a Stable U.S.-China Balance of Power, Carnegie Endowment For
International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyondamerican-predominance-in-western-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-chinabalance-of-power)//JS

Second, and equally important, it is far from clear that American military
predominance in the Asia-Pacific region can be sustained on a consistent
basis, just as it is virtually impossible that China could establish its own
predominance in the region. Two Carnegie reports on the long-term security
environment in Asia, Chinas Military and the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030 and
Conflict and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region,2 concluded that, while
the United States will remain the strongest military power on a global level
indefinitely, Washington will almost certainly confront increasingly severe,
economically induced defense spending limitations that will constrain efforts
to decisively keep well ahead of a growing Chinese military and paramilitary
presence within approximately 1,500 nautical miles of the Chinese coastline,
that is, the area covered by the so-called first and second island chains. This
will occur despite Washingtons repeated assertion that the rebalance to Asia
will sustain Americas predominant position in the region. Moreover, such
largely economic constraints will almost certainly be magnified by the
persistence of tensions and conflicts in other parts of the world, such as the
Middle East and Central Europe. These events are likely to complicate any
U.S. effort to shift forces (and resources) to the Asia-Pacific.
America will lose a war with china
Majumdar 16-Defense editor for the National Interest (Dave, A Readiness
Crises :Would America Lose a War to Russia or China, June 22, 2016, The
National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/readiness-crisiswould-america-lose-war-russia-or-china-16676?page=2)//SL
The United States military is at a crisis point in terms of readiness against high-end
threats such as Russia or Chinaat least thats the view of the House and Senate
Armed Services Committee majority staffs. While part of the cause stems
from the counter-insurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the blame
can be attributed to a moribund acquisition system that chokes the life out of
innovation.
Were in a dramatic crisis now. There is no question that were capable
against the threats on the counter-terrorism side, but weve reached a point
where were in factnot heading towardsbut were already hollow against a
high-end threat, said House Armed Services Committee majority staff
director Bob Simmons speaking before an audience at the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) on June 21. We lack the capacity and capability that
we need to effectively deter on the high-end.
The problem manifests itself in many waysand it spans across the
Pentagons entire range of capabilities in the air, on land, at sea and in space.
One immediate example is U.S. Marine Corps aviationwhere the service
does not have enough trained maintainers to fix their aircraft. Out of a total
of 271 Marine Corps strike aircraft, only about 64 are flyable at any given
time, Simmons noted. The Air Forcemeanwhileis not doing much better
with only 43 percent of its aircraft being full mission capable.
Because of the aircraft shortage, the Marine Corps naval aviators who fly
those warplanes are getting far fewer hours in the air than their Russian and

Chinese counterparts. These days, Marine pilots are flying only four to six
hours per month instead of the twenty to thirty per month they once used to
that creates permanent experience gaps. To put it bluntly, we fly about as
much as the North Korean pilots do and about three times less than Chinese
pilots do today, Simmons said.
Meanwhile, the aircraft themselvesexcept for the handful of Lockheed
Martin F-22 Raptors, F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and Northrop Grumman B-2
Spiritsare not able to penetrate into the teeth of enemy air defenses. Be it
the Fairchild Republic A-10, Boeing F-15, Lockheed Martin F-16 or the Boeing
F/A-18 Hornet, none of those warplanes can survive against the current
generation of Russian and Chinese high-end air defense systems. Even the
latest Russian fourth generation fighter aircraft cant survive against
Moscows own formidable integrated air defense products. Could the Russian
fly their aircraft over Ukraine? Simmons asked. Nope. If youre flying fourthgeneration aircraft in the current environment, youre in trouble.
The Pentagons lack of readiness to fight a high-end war can in many ways be
attributed to the Defense Departments byzantine, risk-averse bureaucracy
that does everything it can to crush innovation. Indeed, the current debacle is
a direct result of the Pentagons pursuit of so-called transformational
capabilities such the F-22, F-35 and the now defunct Future Combat Systems
rather than a more incremental approach. During the Cold War, the United
States would evolve systems incrementally over time. We continued that
through the Cold War, we continued that steady incremental improvement to
all our weapons systems forcing them to chase us, then the Berlin Wall came
down and we adopted their acquisition system, Simmons said sarcastically.
Were trying to get back to incrementalism.
Fundamentally, the House and the Senate are trying to reform the Pentagons
procurement system so that new technologies are developed and fielded
faster in an incremental fashion. The country can simply no longer afford to
invest tens of billions of dollars into programs that might only bear fruit two
to three decades laterif at all. Enemies will catch up in the meantime,
Simmons said. Indeed, in some caseslike the Armys Future Combat
Systemsbillions were squandered with no appreciable result. Chris Brose,
Senate Armed Services Committee majority staff directorwho was also
speaking at the AEI eventsaid he agreed with Simmons assessmentthe
current situation is not acceptable. Were seeing the exact same problem,
Brose said.
The House and the Senate must act now because of the shifts in geopolitics.
After the post-Soviet lull, the high-end anti-access threat has reemerged but
the low-end counter-terrorism threat will persist into the foreseeable future.
Moreover, the current threat does not clearly fit into the Defense
Departments traditional organizational boxesand addressing those
challenges all at the same time is the fundamental problem the Pentagon
faces. The challenge that we have is the need to move faster, the need to
not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Brose said.
As a solution, both Simmons and Brose advocated for an incremental,
decentralized approach to acquisitions. Instead of building an all-powerful

Death Staror perhaps F-35that is massively expensive and might take


decades to bring to fruition, development should be completed in smaller
incremental chunks that could be fielded much faster, Simmons said. That
would also allow the Defense Department to take more riskswhich would
spur innovation. By going to incrementalism, innovation has a chance to
move along in smaller increments and lower risk, Simmons said. The
message that the Congress wants to sent to the Pentagon is: We dont want
you to be afraid to fail, Brose saidwhich is one reason why huge,
ponderous programs persist even when the underlying concept is
fundamentally flawed.
Ultimately, the Congress has to actthe nation simply does not have a
choice given the gravity of the situation. It is truly a crisis. The Department
of Defenseon the civilian leadership sidesays there is no readiness
problem, but there is no getting around the data, Simmons said. The data is
unmistakable, you cant debate it, those are the facts, and the facts are pesky things.

Heg bad terrorism


Hegemony increases the risk of terrorism
Mearshimer and Walt 16 - JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago. STEPHEN M. WALT is Robert and Rene Belfer
Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
(John and Stephen, The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior
U.S. Grand Strategy, Foreign Affairs,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-06-13/caseoffshore-balancing//AK)
Offshore balancing would also reduce the risk of terrorism. Liberal hegemony
commits the United States to spreading democracy in unfamiliar places,
which sometimes requires military occupation and always involves interfering
with local political arrangements. Such efforts invariably foster nationalist
resentment, and because the opponents are too weak to confront the United
States directly, they sometimes turn to terrorism. (It is worth remembering
that Osama bin Laden was motivated in good part by the presence of U.S.
troops in his homeland of Saudi Arabia.) In addition to inspiring terrorists,
liberal hegemony facilitates their operations: using regime change to spread
American values undermines local institutions and creates ungoverned
spaces where violent extremists can flourish.
Offshore balancing would alleviate this problem by eschewing social
engineering and minimizing the United States military foot print. U.S. troops
would be stationed on foreign soil only when a country was in a vital region
and threatened by a would-be hegemon. In that case, the potential victim
would view the United States as a savior rather than an occupier. And once
the threat had been dealt with, U.S. military forces could go back over the
horizon and not stay behind to meddle in local politics. By respecting the
sovereignty of other states, offshore balancing would be less likely to foster
anti-American terrorism.

Democracy promotion bad


Democracy promotion causes endless war
Mearshimer and Walt 16 - JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago. STEPHEN M. WALT is Robert and Rene Belfer
Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
(John and Stephen, The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior
U.S. Grand Strategy, Foreign Affairs,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-06-13/caseoffshore-balancing//AK)
Other critics reject offshore balancing because they believe the United States
has a moral and strategic imperative to promote freedom and protect human
rights. As they see it, spreading democracy will largely rid the world of war
and atrocities, keeping the United States secure and alleviating suffering.
No one knows if a world composed solely of liberal democracies would in fact
prove peaceful, but spreading democracy at the point of a gun rarely works,
and fledgling democracies are especially prone to conflict. Instead of
promoting peace, the United States just ends up fighting endless wars. Even
worse, force-feeding liberal values abroad can compromise them at home.
The global war on terrorism and the related effort to implant democracy in
Afghanistan and Iraq have led to tortured prisoners, targeted killings, and
vast electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Some defenders of liberal hegemony hold that a subtler version of the
strategy could avoid the sorts of disasters that occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Libya. They are deluding themselves. Democracy promotion requires
large-scale social engineering in foreign societies that Americans understand
poorly, which helps explain why Washing tons efforts usually fail. Dismantling
and replacing existing political institutions inevitably creates winners and
losers, and the latter often take up arms in opposition. When that happens,
U.S. officials, believing their countrys credibility is now at stake, are tempted
to use the United States awesome military might to fix the problem, thus
drawing the country into more conflicts.
If the American people want to encourage the spread of liberal democracy,
the best way to do so is to set a good example. Other countries will more
likely emulate the United States if they see it as a just, prosperous, and open
society. And that means doing more to improve conditions at home and less
to manipulate politics abroad.

AT: Taiwan impact


China wont use nuclear weapons over Taiwan economic concerns
overwhelm
Cole, 15- analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service( Michael, If
the Unthinkable Occurred: America Should Stand Up to China over Taiwan,
The National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-the-unthinkableoccured-america-should-stand-china-over-12825)//JS
Ironically, White seems almost convinced that China would be willing to
engage in nuclear war over Taiwan, an assumption that is both untested and
portrays the leadership in Beijing as a bunch of deranged nihilists. For all its
faults, and despite the official rhetoric depicting Taiwan as a core issue, it is
in my view unlikely that the Chinese Communist Party would unleash its
nuclear arsenal over the matter of Taiwan; in fact, I would advance that it is
probably unwilling to gamble Chinas economy over Taiwan by launching
major military operationsall the more so if there is a promise that such a
course of action would result in a concerted response on the part of the
international community. The logic of deterrence is that it diminishes the
likelihood that the international community would be faced with the
maximalist options given us by White. (The bluster only works if we believe it
and Beijing wants us to believe it just like the good professor seems to do
as winning without a fight is a foundational element of Chinese military
strategy.)

AT: Containment CP

Links to politics
Containment links to politics
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of
Canada (Michael, Wither the Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for
Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34, Is
4)//SL
Perhaps the biggest problem with a strategy of confrontation is its lack of
viability. China literally could not be contained even if it were decided that
this was a wise course of action, David Shambaugh notes, precisely
because of China's existing integration in the global system. The genie
cannot be put back into the bottle. Any effort to weaken China's economy
by, say, blocking its access to the global trading system would harm the U.S.
as much as China, not to mention ignite a firestorm of protest from politically
powerful domestic constituencies with vested interests in sustaining
economic links to the mainland. Beijing, unlike Moscow during the Cold War,
would have formidable tools at its disposal for retaliating against any act of
economic warfare. The extent of China's ties to both the American and global
economy have created a degree of interdependence that considerably
narrows the scope of threatening actions that a rational, economically selfinterested actor such as the United States can adopt toward the PRC.

Permutation solves
High level diplomacy is vital to reducing the impact to balancing
China
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security,
defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,
Council on Foreign Relations,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
The United States should energize high-level diplomacy with China to attempt
to mitigate the inherently profound tensions as the two nations pursue
mutually incompatible grand strategies, and to reassure U.S. allies and
friends in Asia and beyond that Washington is doing everything it can to
avoid a confrontation with Beijing.
Despite the destabilizing objectives of Chinas grand strategy in Asia and in
the context of implementing the many policy recommendations in this report
to systemically strengthen the American response to the rise of Chinese
power, the United States bears major responsibilities to promote international
stability, prosperity, and peacein Asia and across the globe.
In this context, take into account the negative consequences for each
countrys formidable domestic challenges if the United States and China
seriously mismanage their relationship. Imagine the tumultuous effects on
the global economy. Consider the dramatic increase in tension throughout
Asia and the fact that no country in this vast region wants to have to choose
between China and the United States. Envision the corrosive impact on U.S.China collaboration on climate change. Picture the fallout over attempts to
deal with the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea and Iran.
With this in mind, the U.S.-China discourse should be more candid, high level,
and private than current practiceno rows of officials principally trading
sermons across the table in Washington or Beijing. Bureaucracies wish to do
today what they did yesterday, and wish to do tomorrow what they did today.
It is, therefore, inevitable that representatives from Washington and Beijing
routinely mount bills of indictment regarding the other side. All are familiar
with these calcified and endlessly repeated talking points. As the Chinese
proverb puts it, To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a
tree to catch a fish.
For such an intensified high-level bilateral dialogue between Washington and
Beijing to be fruitful, it should avoid concentrating primarily on the alleged
perfidious behavior of the other side. For instance, no amount of American
condemnation of Chinas human rights practicesprivate or by megaphone
will consequentially affect Beijings policies, including toward Hong Kong, and
no degree of Chinese complaints will lead the United States to weaken its
alliance systems that are indispensable to the protection of its vital national
interests. Nor is it likely that either side will admit to its actual grand strategy

toward the other. In any case, endemic contention will over time contribute to
a systemic worsening of U.S.-China bilateral relations that results in all the
destructive consequences enumerated earlier.
Instead, after thorough consultations with its Asian allies, the United States
should commit to working with China on two or three issues that would make
a positive contribution to bilateral ties and to international peace and
security. After the November 2014 U.S.-China summit in Beijing, Asian
security would be good subject with which to begin. For example, subjects for
joint exploration could include the possibility of creating a version of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for Asia, expanding the
talks on North Korea to include broader Asian security issues, or agreeing on
enhanced security confidence-building measures between the two sides. To
inspire fresh thinking and creative policy initiatives, it might be best if the
senior individuals to take the lead in these talks were not in the direct
national security chain of command.
The plan doesnt prevent a shift to containment
Mattis, 15 - Peter Mattis is a Fellow in the China Program at The Jamestown
Foundation (U.S. Policy Towards China: Imposing Costs Doesn't Mean Ending
Engagement 9/10, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-policy-towardschina-imposing-costs-doesnt-mean-ending-13810?page=show
The idea of imposing costs or forcing China to face consequences for its
actions is easily misunderstood as abandoning the carrot for the stick as a matter of
U.S. policy toward China. On some issues and for some analysts, moving from
a cordial to an adversarial approach may well be the case in areas such as
South China Sea or cyber. Even these, however, are selective, based on
Chinese actions in particular areas, and focused on continuing the basic U.S.
policy of shaping the choices Beijing can make while encouraging a positive
course. Shaping Chinese choices necessarily requires a mix of incentives and
disincentives, but the latter can only be as strong as the will to act upon
them.
It is worth noting that even Michael Pillsbury in his harshly critical book on
U.S.-China relations, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to
Replace America as the Global Superpower, does not advocate replacing the
carrot with the stick. His policy proposals deal most strongly with better
assessing China, dealing with Beijing as it is run under the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), and avoiding being duped. They boil down to how
President Barack Obama characterized the way to run foreign policy: Dont
do stupid stuff.
The idea that imposing costs and consequences on China for actions inimical
to U.S. interests means abandoning incentives to browbeat Beijing seems
premised on the assumption that such consequences mean the beginning of
a containment strategy and the end of engagement.
Engagement is not going away. Suggestions of its demise are premature. If you
want to persuade or dissuade someone, the only way to ensure your signal

was sent, received, and understood is to meet face-to-face, keep dialogue


open, and ensure senior officials understand how the other side interprets
actions. Apart from that supercilious point, the U.S.-China relationship,
regardless of ostensibly shared interests, is not a fragile flower that will wilt at
the first frost.

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