China’s rise ‘a choice we don’t get to make’

by Sam Sachdeva

When US President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Apec summit in South Korea last month, he offered up a tribute of sorts to Beijing.

The meeting, said Trump, was a gathering of the ‘G2’, a concept first thrown around in the mid-2000s to reflect China’s rise and its role alongside the United States in working together to support the international order.

The US President may have intended to flatter Xi before their talks – but it may also hint at a greater truth that Australian foreign policy expert Sam Roggeveen argues the wider world must accept.

China’s ascent “is not a choice that the Americans get to make – it’s something that’s being imposed upon them”, Roggeveen tells Newsroom.

“In the US, too often this is debated as if it’s a matter of choice: ‘Do we let the Chinese become the leading power in Asia?’ Well, actually, no, that’s not what’s at stake here.”

Roggeveen is a former intelligence analyst turned programme director at the Lowy Institute think tank, and his central message during his visit to New Zealand is that we – and many others – must prepare for life in a post-American Asia.

That doesn’t mean a rapid physical withdrawal of American forces from the region, he hastens to add, although that is more possible under Trump than any other administration. Instead, he envisages a “virtual retrenchment”, where a US presence endures “but the reassurance that its allies get from that presence will decline – is declining”.

That decline is exacerbated by China’s economic rise – the first competitor to the US to have more than 60 percent of American GDP, a mark it passed over a decade ago – and an associated desire to have its might recognised by others.

“Consider the flip side: what if China was the established power and America was the rising power, and what if China had, say, 70,000 troops in Canada and an aircraft carrier permanently stationed in Cuba? Do we think the Americans as a rising power would be content to live with that indefinitely? Absolutely not.

“China for decades simply didn’t have the means to change the power balance in Asia … now it does, and that’s something we have to live with.”

There are some limits to what that change of power could look like. Roggeveen says China still has a limited ability to project military power over long distances, while it is not a “territorially expansionist power” in the vein of the former Soviet Union.

The country’s ambitions will also be constrained by other great powers in Asia, such as India, Japan, Russia and the US – with some notable exceptions.

“Southeast Asia is kind of an exception – Southeast Asia and the Pacific, you might say, because Southeast Asia and the Pacific do not have a resident great power.

“It becomes a more natural outlet for Chinese ambition, because it’s not going to be constrained by a resident great power in the way that it will in other parts of Asia, so that is a real concern for Australia and New Zealand, and for Southeast Asia.”

Roggeveen positions himself not as a hawk or a dove, but as a realist about both China’s intentions and America’s limitations.

“Typically in Australia, the China hawks will argue that we need to go all in with the United States, and the China doves will be those who say, ‘Well, China’s not nearly as threatening as you think, and our relationship with the United States just antagonises them’.

“There’s actually a position in between those two which says that no, we’re right to worry about China and Chinese power is growing rapidly. But equally, we should think about the limits of American resolve and American power, and … we’ll have to do a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves.”

China may not pose a direct military threat to New Zealand or Australia, but there are other risks associated with the constraints it could pose to our national sovereignty.

“The nature of Chinese dominance, if that were ever to come to pass, is not going to be … a Chinese flag flying over the Beehive or over Parliament House in Canberra – the nature of it is going to be what China specialists refer to as a kind of tributary system, where you pay obeisance to Beijing in major national decisions.

“If you’re a proud Kiwi or you’re a proud Australian, you never want your nation to be in a position where it has to pay that kind of price for maintaining its security.”

Roggeveen has suggested Australia adopt an ‘echidna strategy’ in the form of a spiky defence against potential threats, a model he believes would also work for New Zealand.

Both countries have geography on their side, given the difficulty and cost of projecting military power over vast oceans and through the air. Defending such an environment is easier, as the Chinese themselves have shown by making it “incredibly expensive and risky for America to operate its navy near China’s coastline”.

“Well, we can do the same thing, and it’s relatively affordable – it costs much less to deny maritime dominance to China than it does to impose maritime dominance.”

Towards the top of the defence list? The ability to shoot down aircraft and sink ships and submarines. But diplomacy may be more important than military might, Roggeveen says, with another potential threat coming from the development of military bases in the neighbouring Pacific Islands.

“The resources to constrain any Chinese ambition to develop a military presence in the Pacific Island region … must be a key national priority for both countries, and at the moment, that’s a very good news story.”

Australia has signed deals with Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Nauru obliging the Pacific nations not to work with a third party – such as China – without prior consultation, something Roggeveen views as vital.

The US may need to learn how to share power in the Pacific, but that does not mean handing over control to China entirely, he says.

“What we’re fumbling towards, what we’re slowly moving towards, is a kind of an arrangement in which China becomes the leading strategic power in Asia. The question that’s up for grabs is, does it become the dominant strategic power in Asia?

“That is really what the contest is all about.”

Sam Sachdeva is Newsroom's national affairs editor, covering foreign affairs and trade, housing, and other issues of national significance.

The article was first published on Newsroom.