China Must Possess the Capability to Restrict the U.S.

With the rise of China’s economic standing, changes in the relationship between China and the U.S. over the last couple years have led to people clamoring about the China-threat theory, misguided assumptions about the decline of America theory and the rise of the briefly in-vogue China-U.S. joint leadership theory. The author, however, believes that the real situation is that China does not pose a threat, the U.S. has not declined, and there certainly exists no prospect for joint leadership by China and America. Sino-U.S. relations manifest only in the cooperation and competition between China and the U.S. as members of a common world system. In restricting U.S. hegemony, China cannot shirk its own responsibility, nor can it blindly model itself after American-style democracy.

From the perspective of cooperation, the operation of the world system depends on America and China. For a long time, the U.S. drove the globalization process with its liberal economics and social value system. Now China is becoming an equally important driving force, on par with that of the U.S. America’s role is to protect and promote the current world system, while China’s contribution lies in becoming the world’s factory, able to meet the demands of global consumption. The work ethic of the Chinese and the creative spirit of Americans are both hard to replace.

Competitively speaking, China and the U.S. form a relationship of containment and restriction. The U.S. contains China, preventing China from presenting a threat to America’s status, while China restricts the U.S. by limiting America’s ambitions to use globalization to “stuff their own pockets.”

Of course, America’s containment of China only requires that the U.S. aim a portion of its strategic power at China. China’s restraint of the U.S., however, requires an all-around drastic increase in China’s comprehensive national power. In the realm of hard power, there exists a big difference between China and America’s economic and military strength. Therefore, there is no need for China to pursue a policy of overtaking the U.S. in strategic capabilities. However, America’s overall dominance should not be an overpowering one; rather, there should be some sort of reasonable balance.

Regarding soft power, China is striving to improve its cultural and political model so that it can withstand the pressure from America regarding its promotion of the American-style democratic system. China’s “historical mission” of restricting the U.S. within this global system ultimately means that when it comes to constructing a national system, China cannot blindly follow the U.S. China will not adopt American-style democracy. China can restrain the U.S., but only by preserving the soft power of its own political system model and by keeping its options open regarding other national development models.

Presently, China does not have the international political capability to restrain the U.S. In reality, it is currently the cooperation between China, Russia and a number of other countries that are fearful of American hegemony jointly working to restrict the U.S. With the expansion of economic ties, global governance needs to be further strengthened, but this does not mean that any single nation should be allowed to monopolize world power. In the future, even if global governance requires a relatively high concentration of power, it should be in the form of an executive power, not in the form of a decision-making power that affects the fate of nation-states. The U.S. can be a pillar within the world system, but it cannot be a manipulator of world power. In restricting hegemony, great powers cannot shirk their own responsibility. This is the reason why China and other responsible great powers cannot simply obey the U.S. or pursue the American model.