Who Says China Is A Threat?

I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable earlier this year after reading John Mearsheimer's "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics", especially when he wrote about how China aimed to displace the United States as the primary power in the region, and how Washington had to take steps to prevent the Middle Kingdom from challenging American global and regional preeminence.

But of course, I did not have the intellectual rigor to articulate my discomfort, until I read an article by David Shambaugh, who argued that Mearsheimer's logic and application of offensive realism on China were "unsustainable."

Shambaugh wrote: "It is a classic example of an international relation theorist, who is not well-grounded in regional area studies, deductively applying a theory to a situation rather than inductively generating theory from evidence. As a China specialist, I do not recognize the China that Mearsheimer describes, and I see no evidence of his "Chinese hegemony" thesis and thus reject his policy prescription of preemptive containment." (David Shambaugh, "China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order", International Security 29:3 Winter 2004/2005)

Shambaugh noted that contemporary international relations involve more than just relations among great powers, and even great power interactions "are not intrinsically zero-sum Hobbesian struggles." Rather, they are "complex mixtures of interdependence, cooperation amid competition, and structural adjustments."

"Just as one nation (China) rises, it does not ipso facto follow that another (United States) must fall - or even decline relatively," Shambaugh added.

You know, after reading so much literature - if not hysteria - about the China threat, it is such a great relief to finally, if not occasionally, hear a slightly saner, more rational, and certainly more balanced voice on China.