influence of the PRC with Great Power Competition Globalization

The Influence of the PRC
Introduction
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the state that most influences contemporary international security. The globalization of the Communist superpower projects brings employment and economic growth. Since joining the World Trade Organization, China has become an increasingly influential participant in the global economy, and has used this increase in wealth to finance its other ambitions, including re-establishing itself as a great maritime power and increasing its influence over the South China Sea and nuclear development within the Indo-Pacific region.
People’s Republic of China Context
The People’s Republic of China emerged as the winning side in the post-WWII civil war between the Communist Party of China and the ruling Kuomintang. The latter was exiled to Taiwan, the PRC invaded Tibet, and the next change to the shape of the Chinese map was the return of Hong Kong and Macau to PRC rule in 1997 and 1999 respectively. In the early 1980s the Communist Party began the process of opening up China’s economy, but did so without opening up much else in Chinese society (“The Internationalization of China’s Economy). By 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, and at that time it was already growing its economy rapidly. Since that point, China has become an economic powerhouse, and this in turn has allowed China to increase its military might considerably, and restore the nation to its former status as a regional and global power.
Great Power Competition
Great powers often engage in competition for power and influence, both in their respective regions and in the world at large. The competition of ideas, practices and norms may not be overtly confrontational but does reveal significant strategic divergence between great powers (Pollack, nd). China’s relationships, both with the West and with other Asia-Pacific powers, is characterized by its 20th and 21st century histories. Its relationship with Japan is strongly influenced by the latter’s imperial ambitions in the 1930s, when it took over a section of China and ruled with brutality. China’s relationship with the West is colored by the fact that China is run by a Communist regime, and the West has strongly opposed Communism ever since the idea was invented. Furthermore, China’s northern hegemon, Russia, while also a Communist regime, has strained relations with China dating back to at least the 1960s.
The US takes the perspective that it does not wish to exclude China from world affairs, and championed China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization. Further, many Western countries switched from recognition of the Kuomintang as the legitimate rulers of China to the CPC, thereby lending further support by the early 1970s to the People’s Republic as the legitimate China, isolating Taiwan in the process. While China had an adversarial approach with the US while aligned with the USSR, even after the Sino-Soviet schism, China actively opposed US containment strategy, alliances and heavy-handed influence in Asia (Pollack, n.d.).
Underpinning the nature of great power competition in the world today is that many of the 20th centuries most significant powers have slower-growing economies and older populations, while there are now many emerging economies with young populations and fast-growing economies, thereby tilting the balance of power and giving it greater distribution (NIC, 2017). This reality gives China more opportunities to exert its influence around the globe.
A recent development only served to underscore what many observers have known for a long while, that there is a great competition between major powers. In a speech by US Vice-President Mike Pence, a looming cold war was indicated, in turn revealing how the US perceives the PRC, and likely showing that the PRC feels similarly towards the US and other major rivals – such views are seldom birthed in a vacuum, but as the result of evidence, actions and words between the powers (Global Times, 2018). While some believe that the strategic competition between the US and China is likely to remain in the realm of trade and technology, it does underscore the risk that the competition could extend beyond that, especially if the US perceives that its interests in Asia are threatened by the PRC’s growing power.
The structural realist approach to international relations holds that the balance of power and competition between nations is the most important aspect of international politics, and it appears that the US and PRC leadership share a the realist view. This view is rooted in a variation of the zero sum game, where one nation’s power comes at the expense of another nation’s power. Further to that, there is only so much power to go around, and increasing power of one will necessarily lead it to enjoy better deals, a military advantage and ultimately it will “win” more competitions over time. Thus, the realist view that the US and PRC both presently hold is more likely to lead to conflict than other international political perspectives, especially since the US took over from Japan as Asia-Pacific’s main hegemon, prior to China’s ascendency, even as the US supported that ascendency.
Globalization
China’s growing power has come as the result of the forces of globalization, and how those forces have manifested in the international arena. In the 1980s, the true globalization of today was in its infancy, and the international political game was aimed more at breaking down Communist power structures, especially the USSR, so that this power could be replaced by Western interests (Hoffman, 2002). China’s rise a global economic power was the beginning of a major power shift, however, given the capitalist underpinnings of modern globalization. Trade is central to globalization, and China was able to leverage several competitive advantages in order to rapidly grow its economy. Even in recent years, when the CPC has tried to control growth to avoid negative economic consequences like runaway inflation, China has increased its profile in global trade (Morrison, 2017).
Early in China’s economic opening, it sought the influence of Chinese cultural diaspora. At the time, this included Hong Kong and Macau, two cities with significant economic power, the former in particular. But also, there are many nations with large Chinese communities, in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and growing ethnic Chinese influence in Western nations like Canada, Australia and the United States. These cultural links helped China to find early trading partners and start to learn the game of global trade. These trade links turned into institutional knowledge that helped prepare the PRC for the day when it fully entered the global trade system (“Foreign Direct Investment”, nd.)
As China entered the era of globalization, it adopted the posture of the trading state, where it focused on trade, and avoided having too strong an ideological influence, which is counter to the approach the many other nations, especially those in the West have taken. The focus on trade has allowed China to continue to run its internal affairs with little interference or even serious scrutiny, which is one of the goals of the CPC, given that Communism essentially requires tight social control in order to sustain itself. Trade has proven a valuable pathway to increasing wealth, and China has not been compelled to sacrifice its grip on its society internally, which is the natural outcome of China having substantial leverage over most other nations in terms of its trading power (“China as a Trading State”, nd).
As China’s power has grown, so too has its ambitions. The Belt and Road Initiative has many components, but one of these is China’s significant infrastructure investment in foreign countries throughout the world (Chatsky &McBride, 2019) . First, this investment provides direct links between China and foreign regimes, valuable at the United Nations and valuable when other powers seek influence in those countries. Furthermore, these infrastructure links often give China direct control over global trade infrastructure, such as in Colombo. This initiative servers to leverage China’s economic strength to gain influence. But it also fuels military threat, in that China can leverage these partners for military installations and favorable treatment, not to mention the economic power that helps finance China’s military ambitions. This approach contrasts with the US, where military strength was used to influence economic expansion in many parts of the world.
Conclusion
China’s military threat is the direct result of its growing economic clout. The military threat supports this economic power, for example in the South China Sea, but it also can be used in the future to give China favorable access to critical resources, because of the way that China is building influence around the world. At issue is really where Chinese and US interests collide, which is likely the case when two countries take a structural realism approach to international affairs, and compete at a high level for access to markets, resources and other sources of global power. The influence of China is growing, and increasingly its military threat is used to leverage smaller nations into submission on key issues. China still has many areas on which to focus in its own backyard, so there is no imminent threat close to home, but there is definitely risk that China poses a military threat to American interests in Asia, and to a lesser extent anywhere in the Belt and Road area, which includes the Middle East. For now, this is a cold conflict, waged mainly in the economic sphere, but it does have the potential to flare up into a hot conflict should there be a sufficiently large catalyzing incident.
References
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