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Opinion Journal

• OPINION ASIA
• JANUARY 17, 2011

The Coming Clash With China

Hu Jintao's visit to Washington may be intended to patch up relations, but it is more likely to prove a turning point as tensions rise.

By AARON FRIEDBERG

When he meets with U.S. President Barack Obama this week, China's paramount leader Hu Jintao will not be carrying a symbolic "reset button" of the sort that Secretary of State Clinton presented to her Russian counterpart back in 2009. But he will probably be looking for ways to soothe concerns over his country's recent behavior and its possible implications for the future course of U.S.-China relations.

The last two years have seen a marked upturn in tensions between the two Pacific powers, as well as between China and many of its Asian neighbors. As viewed from Washington, but also from Seoul, Tokyo, Hanoi, Canberra, and New Delhi, this trend is a direct result of increasingly assertive Chinese words and deeds across a wide range of fronts. In the past 12 months alone Beijing has:

•Shielded North Korea from tough international sanctions, despite Pyongyang's unprovoked sinking of a South Korean naval vessel and subsequent deadly shelling of a small island;

•Escalated what might otherwise have been a minor incident at sea into a major confrontation with Japan.

•Used its near monopoly in the production of certain rare earth minerals critical to high-tech manufacturing as an instrument to exert diplomatic leverage.

•Intensified its long-standing claim to virtually all of the resource-rich South China Sea by suggesting that the region was a "core national interest," a term previously used to refer only to areas (like Tibet and Taiwan) over which China is willing to go to war.

•Declared publicly that, when it comes to resolving competing claims over this region "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact."

•Threatened for the first time to impose sanctions on U.S. companies that participate in arms sales to Taiwan.

•Conducted unprecedentedly large and complex naval exercises in the waters of the Western Pacific outside the so-called "First Island Chain."

•Revealed the existence of a new stealth fighter aircraft.

•Begun initial deployments of a new anti-ship ballistic missile targeted on U.S. aircraft carriers operating in the Western Pacific.

Not surprisingly, all of this activity has stirred anxiety across Asia. It has begun to Not surprisingly, all of this activity has stirred anxiety across Asia. It has begun to
Not surprisingly, all of this activity has stirred anxiety across Asia. It has begun to provoke responses from the United States as well as other countries in the region. President Obama's recent swing through Asia included stops in the capitals of India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, but it pointedly excluded Beijing. American and Japanese defense officials have since announced their intention to devote more resources to counter China's rising power, the United States and South Korea have enhanced their military cooperation, and, despite a history of animosity, Seoul and Tokyo have taken steps in the same direction.

Beijing's behavior has thus triggered reactions that, if allowed to run their course, will make it harder to achieve its likely long-term goal of re-establishing China as the dominant power in East Asia. A well-timed campaign of "smile diplomacy" could help to slow down this balancing process, even if it cannot derail it altogether. That is likely what Mr. Hu and his handlers have in mind for their meetings in Washington this week.


But how meaningful and lasting will any of this be? The answer depends in large part on what lies behind China's recent assertiveness. Some Western analysts have sought to explain it away as an incidental by-product of political infighting in the run-up to the planned 2012 leadership succession or a passing outburst of belligerence by some elements of the People's Liberation Army. Cooler heads have now prevailed and are trying to put the country back on the smoother, less confrontational path it has followed for the past several decades.

Unfortunately, the problem is more deeply rooted than these reassuring assertions would seem to suggest. While they may disagree on questions of tactics and timing, there is no reason to believe that China's leaders differ over fundamental questions of strategy. Beijing may be willing to dial back its rhetoric but it is not going to abandon its goal of regional preponderance. That fact will lead inevitably to growing tensions with its neighbors, and with the United States.

Since the start of the 2008-09 financial crisis many Chinese strategists have reached the conclusion that the United States is declining, and their own country is rising much faster than had previously been expected. Belief that this is the case has fed an already powerful strain of forceful, sometimes belligerent nationalism that appears to be increasingly widespread, especially among the young.
In this view it is time for China to "stand up," to right some of the wrongs suffered when the country was relatively weak, and to reclaim its rightful role in Asia and the world. Such sentiments are not the exclusive preserve of the military, although it may seek to tap them, and at times to stir them, for its own ends. The rising generation of Chinese leaders cannot afford to ignore these views; indeed, to a considerable degree, it probably shares them.

If this assessment is correct, then the last two years are not a temporary deviation but a portent of things to come. Rather than signaling the start of a new interval of cooperation and stability, Hu Jintao's visit may actually mark the end of an era of relatively smooth relations between the United States and China.

Mr. Friedberg is a professor at Princeton University. His new book, "A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia" is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.