China's Strategy of Weakness

China''s Strategy of Weakness

By Evan A. Feigenbaum
Issue cover-dated March 1, 2001
Reprinted with Permission of The Far Eastern Economic Review

Strategists across the Asia-Pacific argue that Chinese foreign
policymakers are preoccupied with Taiwan, East Asia, missile defence and
a potential nuclear rivalry with India. But if so, then why is China making
billion-dollar oil investments in the strategic countries of Central Asia,
expanding its military and police presence in bordering provinces and
intensifying efforts to offer itself as a strategic counterweight to Russia
and other powers?

The answer is instructive, for it demonstrates in stark relief three facts
about China''s strategic posture that are often missed: Its foreign policy in
many cases is driven by domestic weakness; China increasingly is nervous
about internal stability; finally, it is becoming sophisticated in its use of
international cooperation, not simply military and police coercion, to tamp
down domestic pressures on the regime. Strategists would do well to take
notice because China''s experience in Central Asia reveals much about its
strengths, weaknesses and strategies in an era of American
pre-eminence. Domestically, it lays bare the limits of the coercive power
of the Chinese regime. Externally, it reveals just how creative Beijing''s
diplomacy can be. And strategically, it shows that China can
cleverly— and successfully— appeal to common challenges as the basis for
cooperation with countries that might normally see it as a potential
threat.

At first glance, Central Asia seems a curious candidate upon which to
reach more general conclusions about Chinese foreign policy. It is remote.
But it is strategically significant. The region lies astride the borders of
Russia, China, Iran, Nato''s easternmost member (Turkey) and
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In several countries, Muslim secularists are
battling Islamic extremists for power. An estimated 200 billion barrels of oil
in the Caspian Sea have brought most of the major multinational energy
companies to the region.

With such ferment on its sensitive western border, it seems paradoxical
that China''s primary objective in Central Asia is derived from a domestic
agenda: how to maintain stability in its predominantly Muslim region of
Xinjiang, a vast and restive province in which Beijing confronts terrorist
bombings and ethnic strife. Local resentment at the resettlement of Han
Chinese into regions populated mainly by Central Asian Uighurs runs deep.
As in Tibet, China''s rule in Xinjiang can be harsh: Western-based
monitoring groups have recorded more than 200 death sentences and 200
executions since 1997.

China has both economic and political-military objectives in the region. But
keeping restive Xinjiang pacified is a task that Beijing has repeatedly failed
to accomplish through internal measures alone. China has been assiduous,
therefore, in employing sophisticated appeals to international partners,
who are willing to suppress anti-Chinese dissent that might also threaten
the stability of their secularist regimes.

This has made for some stylish diplomacy. But it also tips the regime''s
hand— Beijing is weak, and deeply ambivalent about the ability of its
police. That is ironic. The Chinese police can be very brutal. But while the
state has an impressive record of highly targeted acts of coercion and
oppression, its failure to suppress the Falun Gong also demonstrates that
it is inefficient at fully beating back a determined challenge to the regime
that employs targeted goals rather than seeking the complete overthrow
of the communist state. Thus, some important elements of Chinese
diplomacy are in fact strategic solutions to domestic weakness.

This opens up an opportunity for the United States. China regards as
"terrorists" and "separatists" some groups that most Americans view
otherwise. But China''s terrorist challenge is, in some cases, real. The
challenge of weapons of mass destruction faces all countries, and China
has made terrorism a basis of its appeals in Central Asia. Bus explosions in
Beijing remind many Chinese of the Sarin gas attack on Tokyo''s subway.
Do not weapons of mass destruction pose a challenge to China too?

Strategists sceptical of China''s proliferation record could use this as a
basis for broader discussions. Without strengthening Beijing''s tactical
capabilities, the U.S., Japan and others could conduct an intensive
dialogue with China on the problem of mass-destruction terrorism. This
would speak to some of China''s own challenges. And it would make U.S.
concerns about such weapons clearer to Beijing. It might provide an
opening for the Bush administration to explain to China— perhaps the
primary international opponent of its missile-defence plans— why it
believes defence is so important.

The writer, Evan A. Feigenbaum is executive director of the Asia-Pacific
Security Initiative at Harvard University''s John F. Kennedy School of
Government.