China is Still Not an Enemy

Source: Wikimedia Commons/US-China 7th discussion on trading issue.

What is China to the US? A near-peer adversary? A competitor? A mistaken foe? Maybe even a potential friend? These are all different ideas, but also wrong, the key reason being that they are too broad without enough nuance. Economically, China has grown over the past couple of decades in terms of real GDP at a level never seen before. Militarily, China has expanded its naval presence to challenge other nations’ territorial sovereignty. Politically, China has repressed its citizens beliefs and freedoms, and has conducted espionage operations on US soil. And even with all of this, the US manages to fearmonger excessively regarding China that it could lead to economic decoupling, interpersonal decoupling, and diplomatic decoupling, leading to a lack of connections which could create the conditions for a misunderstanding that could escalate to tensions never seen before. For this reason, this paper will argue that US fearmongering, in the government and at the think tank level, has contributed to conditions that could lead to a war between the US and China, and how to reverse course on this dangerous situation before it becomes too late. 

First, China should not be taken lightly. It is a military threat first and foremost, and it has breached international law countless times and continues to threaten the territorial integrity of US allies, particularly the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, and Taiwan. Second, they have abused international law by building artificial islands in the South China Sea, challenging legitimate Vietnamese, Philippine, and other nations’ claims. This all means that the US does play a critical role imposing international law in Asia as a whole as per the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, but this does not have to spill over into the economic realm as Japan has proven time and time again through its separation of politics and economics strategy.  

Second, combining civilian and military infrastructure is normal throughout the world, but it takes place in different forms. The most important aspect of the civilian side is that the Chinese people are not the enemy, rather they are akin to US contractors, the latter of which take on a wide variety of roles. American obsessions with labeling “China” as a threat and believing that the populace of China are all true believers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) - specifically that all civilians will choose to cooperate with the Chinese intelligence community at a moment's notice once contacted - is fearmongering at its finest. Civil-military fusion is a symptom of this, with some proposing that the civilian and military sectors are so interwoven that the Chinese civilian populace – by targeting the Three Gorges Dam – could be a legitimate target in a kinetic war. While some instances could be seen as legitimate concerns, specifically in the shipbuilding realm with remote Chinese control and data transfer for cranes, the US does the same action with contracting military contracts to civilian personnel. This first and foremost goes to show that the US does much of what they claim China does. 

Third, the US and China can economically and technologically cooperate in the civilian sector. Many people fear that China will steal their technology if they work with Chinese companies, especially with the Chinese intelligence services having a deep grip over the daily lives of each citizen. For the betterment of all people around the world, this may be a good thing. US intellectual property (IP) law is very flawed, discouraging innovation while encouraging the monopolization of critical technologies that could be used by many more. It is likely, and has been proven sometimes with a Chinese cyber intrusion into the Japanese space agency, that China is stealing a wealth of technology.  Nevertheless, for the good of humanity it may be more beneficial to allow for more joint development, or even tolerate this intellectual property theft, in order to benefit US citizens more in the long run through new technological innovations. For military technology, there should be restrictions as it is important to keep a competitive advantage, but aside from this there are limited areas that should be restricted for joint development or economic deals. None of this should discourage trade, cooperation, or personnel exchanges in order to build ties between the two nations to prevent conflict and grow amiable relations. 

While this analysis likely goes against the views on both sides of Capitol Hill, China is a military threat but not an economic or technological one. Looking at primarily the South China Sea, China has unilaterally breached treaties, territory, and international law through both their land reclamation projects and their claims to a multitude of international waters. Seen best with their coast guard, China has shot water cannons at vessels in order to keep them out of their claimed maritime boundaries. On top of this, China does not respect any cyber sovereignty, conducting hacking operations to paralyze both civilian and military installations alike (specifically the instance of Guam with the Volt Typhoon hacking operation). And while China will not be causing the downfall of the United States as a nation, this does show that China does pose a real and credible threat to US security, but not to the point where it warrants economic decoupling or declaring China as an existential threat. 

Regardless of fear mongering, there is hope. In the US, a very important piece was published titled“China is not an enemy” outlines the main points of this paper, but fails to recognize the issue of IP law as well as not being able to take into account the increasing trend of Chinese fearmongering in the United States by think tanks such as the Center of Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in their analysis titled“Ship Wars”. As the article mentioned above states, China is neither an economic nor an existential security threat and so treating it as such could spark increased conflict for little to no reason. Again, to reiterate one last time, China is not an enemy, but rather a limited military threat that must be engaged with, not decoupled from. For this reason, the US should strive again to cooperate and negotiate with China rather than to isolate and demonize not only its government and its key leaders, but also its civilian population.