Media Type: Academic article
Ge Jun, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer and researcher, argues that as U.S.-China tensions worsen, Beijing should pursue confidence-building measures (CBMs) with the United States to improve its security environment. Ge draws on CBMs conducted by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War to suggest how the effectiveness of such efforts can be maximized, highlighting the importance of private communication channels, ensuring concessions are roughly equivalent, and first exploring other areas of cooperation to build up strategic trust.
Wang Shushen, an expert in U.S.-Taiwan relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argues that shifts in the level and nature of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan that began under the Trump administration are forcing Beijing to deploy its own set of deterrence measures. These dynamics, Wang argues, will make it difficult to prevent and control a crisis in and around the Taiwan Strait in the future.
In this 2016 analysis, Zhang Wenzong, an expert at a state security-backed think tank, argues that Beijing must bolster its ability to withstand and counter U.S. deterrence strategy by strengthening its own economic and military resilience, overseas strategic partnerships, and domestic stability.
In this 2012 article, senior military scholar Ni Lexiong analyzes the historical course of China’s military modernization efforts, and argues that Beijing should invest in a strong blue-water navy to secure its expanding overseas economic interests and deter the formation of a U.S.-led maritime alliance designed to contain China. Ni also cautions that China should approach this process carefully, in order to avoid triggering security concerns among its maritime neighbors that could provoke to a regional arms race.
Wen Tianpeng and Chen Xing, Taiwan scholars at Nanjing University and Beijing Union University, respectively, explore the motivations behind what they perceive as a reorientation of Japan’s strategy vis-à-vis Taiwan and implications for Japan-China relations going forward. In their view, the dynamics of U.S.-Japan-China ties are driving Tokyo to depart from its traditionally “low profile” position on Taiwan. However, Wen and Chen argue that Japan’s strong economic ties to China will ultimately prevent it from revising its official “One China” policy.
Xiu Chunping, a Taiwan scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argues that China-Japan relations will deteriorate in the foreseeable future as a result of Tokyo’s growing interest in regional security, particularly in and around the Taiwan Strait. She argues that Japan is increasingly willing to provide greater and more explicit economic, diplomatic, and military support for Taiwan, and draws on a complex mix of historical, geopolitical, and domestic political factors to explain this perceived shift – including Japan’s colonial legacy in Taiwan, power shifts between Japan and China, and the work of “Taiwan independence forces.”
Cai Liang, a researcher focused on regional issues in Asia at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, argues that Japan is no longer maintaining purely unofficial relations with Taiwan that center around trade, investment, and cultural exchange. This is evident, Cai holds, in what he sees as Tokyo’s efforts to internationalize discussion of Taiwan and emphasize shared values. Cai attributes this perceived change largely to the dynamics of rising strategic competition between the United States and China.
Zuo Xiying, one of China’s top experts on international security, examines evolving U.S. deterrence strategies in light of rising strategic competition with China. He argues that the gap in conventional deterrence capabilities between China and the U.S. is rapidly narrowing owing to China’s technological and military advances and what he sees as the decline of the U.S. industrial base. As a “stress reaction” to this perceived decline, Zuo argues U.S. policymakers have begun to discuss declining American conventional deterrence capabilities vis-a-vis China more frequently. Zuo warns that Beijing should approach shifts in relative capabilities cautiously, and recognize that the U.S. is expanding its “toolbox” of mechanisms that can be leveraged flexibly to deter China, particularly in the case of heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
In an academic journal published by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a top think tank under the Ministry of State Security, scholars from Beijing Foreign Studies University analyze evolving debate on China in Germany, half a year into the federal German “traffic light” coalition. They argue that Germany sees China as both an economic competitor that “will surpass it” and a “world economic and political superpower” on which it is dependent economically. As a result of what they term this “extremely contradictory” assessment of China, there are still “some positive elements that should receive more attention” from Chinese policymakers seeking to further develop a practical, cooperative China-Germany relationship. The authors conclude by arguing that China should leverage “the internal rifts among the Western allies [that]…will be difficult to heal” to its advantage in creating a “new space for great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics” and an “international environment conducive to China.”
Wang Wen, a distinguished scholar from Renmin University argues that while internal and particularly external risks to China’s development have undoubtedly grown, the “period of strategic opportunity” heralded formally by Jiang Zemin in 2002 endures. In Wang’s view, Chinese leadership must internalize this belief and proactively communicate it publicly, as “targeted encouragement for the future” that in turn maintains “medium-to-high growth in all fields of society.”
Emphasis added throughout text by editors.