Rising China & U.S. Foreign Policy

Readings:

• Confucius, Analects, Book Thirteen
• Nathan Leites, The Operational Code of the Politburo, Ch.3
• David Lampton, “How China is Ruled,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2014
• Timothy Beardson, Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future, Ch. 7
• Charles Horner and Eric Brown, “A Century After the Qing: Yesterday’s Empire and Today’s Republics,” China Heritage Quarterly, September 2011
• Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “How China Sees America, the Sum of Beijing’s Fears,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2012
• General Office of the CCP, “Document No. 9: Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere”

Discussion Questions:

1. What does Confucius mean by the “rectification of names,” and why is this so important to the conduct of a country’s political and strategic affairs?
2. In what ways are “China” and the “PRC” Leninist regime that rules China different, and in what ways are they one and the same?
3. How might domestic factors—including corruption, lack of the rule of law, demographic imbalances, and the booms and busts of economic dynamism—affect the future shape and orientation of the PRC’s rule?
4. What are the implications of “China’s” integration with the Asian liberal order for the “PRC”?

Readings:

• Geremie Barme, “After the Future in China”
• Jacqueline Newmeyer Deal, “China’s Nationalist Heritage,” The National Interest, January/February 2013
• Aaron Friedberg, A Contest For Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle For Mastery in Asia, Ch. 6
• William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?,” International Studies Review (2008)
• Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hatred, “Bellicose and Thuggish”

Discussion Questions:

1. What are the fears, interests and ambitions that motivate Chinese nationalism?
2. Does Chinese nationalism enhance the security of China and the PRC regime or does it undermine it?
3. What are the implications of Chinese nationalism and the Chinese search for alternative theories of world order for the PRC’s relations with its neighbors and with the U.S.?

Readings:

• John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” The National Interest
• Ashley J. Tellis, “Balancing Without Containment: A U.S. Strategy for Confronting China’s Rise,” The Washington Quarterly, Fall 2013
• John G. Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008
• Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hatred, “Behind the Rise of Great Powers”
• Cui Tiankai and Pang Hanzhao, “On China and U.S. Working Together to Build a New-Type Relationship between Major Countries,” China International Strategy Review (2012)
• James T. H. Tang, “Northeast Asia Without the United States: Towards Pax Sinica?”

Discussion Questions:

1. What kind of “Risen China” does the U.S. want, and what is the U.S. willing to do to achieve this?
2. What instruments of national power does the U.S. have at its disposal to shape the course of China’s rise? What new instruments might we need?
3. What are the implications of a weak, unstable, and potentially chaotic China for Asia and for the PRC’s conduct in it?

Readings:

• Aaron Friedberg, A Contest For Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle For Mastery in Asia, Ch. 10

On this day we will explore alternative US long-range strategies for coping with the rise of China through a simulation of a protracted crisis in Asia.