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BY MONTE R. BULLARD | IN-DEPTH PIECE In general, experts tend to perceive that a rising China poses a threat to international peace and security. Some experts state the threat comes from expansionism, while others assert the threat comes from China’s easy lending to developing nations around the world, which, now, because of China’s loan policies, face potential debt crises. According to many experts, both threats pose an imminent threat to U.S. national interests. In this article, we examine the Chinese threat of expansionism, which is perceived as one of China’s strategies to attain its ultimate foreign policy goals of taking over the world. However, we disavow the mainstream narrative that Chinese expansionism poses a threat to international peace and stability. We contend that the experts’ focus on Chinese expansionism as a threat to peace and security in neighboring areas such as the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, as well as farther afield, is a red herring, because China’s overall strategy is not territorial expansion. In this series, we aim to refute these types of China threat theories in order to identify more likely Chinese international aspirations that pose a challenge to the current U.S.-led world order. China’s strategy, in fact, can be found in the advancement of legal, cultural, political, and, in particular, economic relationships, that drive China’s foreign policy goals and are clearly inimical to some U.S. national interests. These different aspirations will be examined in future blogs while this article focuses on expansion threat theory.
BY MONTE R. BULLARD | IN-DEPTH PIECE American Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOP) policy in the South China Sea, sometimes focused on the Spratly Islands (Nansha) and Paracel Islands (Xisha) within the South China Sea, is clearly based on incomplete information. A review of official reports, like the America First National Security Strategy (AFNSS) and the Defense Department’s Annual Report to Congress 2018 on China’s Military Power, indicates that the government writers and reviewers of these documents when describing whether China is a strategic threat or a strong economic competitor almost always come to the conclusion or just assumed that China is a threat. We note that even the Harvard Belfer Center paints China as a threat as do two excellent articles in the Winter 2018 edition of the Naval War College Review.[1] We have already written one blog that offers a critique of the AFNSS. This blog is to point out weaknesses in some official and academic reports.
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