Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Hanoi on Tuesday, August 24, as part of a high-stakes visit to Southeast Asia this week that aims to bolster economic and security ties with U.S. partners in Singapore and Vietnam. Ms. Harris is the first U.S. Vice President to visit Vietnam.

Vietnamese online newspaper VnExpress spoke with APARC Southeast Asia Program Director Donald K. Emmerson about the significance of Harris’ visit. The following is an expanded version of the interview.  

VnExpress: What does the visit mean to the United States, to Vietnam, and to the U.S.-Vietnam relationship?

Emmerson: U.S.-Vietnam relations have steadily and markedly improved in recent years, especially in the security realm. A case in point is the recent visit of the U.S. secretary of defense. The first-ever visit to Hanoi by a sitting American vice-president, Kamala Harris, is meant to further strengthen U.S.-Vietnam relations. Their importance will be underscored by Kamala Harris’s status in the U.S. government, second only to President Biden’s. Their scope will be advanced by the prominence of nonmilitary topics on her agenda.

The two governments have agreed to call their relations “comprehensive.” By attending to economic and social cooperation as well as security matters, the visit will better illustrate that inclusive label. It is even possible that the United States and Vietnam could, in the not too distant future, upgrade their relationship by calling it not only “comprehensive” but “strategic” as well.

VnExpress: In Hanoi, Harris will launch the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regional office in Southeast Asia. Why did the United States choose Vietnam for the CDC regional office? And what is your assessment of the Vietnam-U.S. medical cooperation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Emmerson: In the realm of health, Vietnam offers a record of achievement and challenge. Based on official statistics, Vietnam appears to have countered the virus more effectively than most Asian countries. Yet it still needs to deal more thoroughly with the consumption of wildlife sold in wet markets where future viruses can bridge the gap from animals to people. COVID-19, which began in neighboring China, has killed nearly 4.5 million people worldwide and worsened the lives of almost everyone on the planet. A regional office of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Vietnam could reduce the threat of future pandemics while helping to strengthen health systems and policies throughout Southeast Asia.  

VnExpress: What do you think about Vietnam's role in the region and in the world?

Emmerson: Nearly five decades have passed since the end of Vietnam’s successful “Resistance War against America” in 1975 and the failure of China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979. The challenge for Vietnam going forward will be to maintain the resilience and autonomy that it has earned at such a high cost in lost lives. Kamala Harris’s visit can contribute to that goal. If and as inter-state peace continues to prevail in East Asia, one can also hope that Vietnam’s leaders will feel less threatened and thus possibly less obliged to curtail the rights and freedoms of their own people.  

As for Vietnam’s role in the region (and, indirectly, the world), one priority could be for Hanoi to coordinate its policies on the South China Sea with those of other Southeast Asian claimant states and possibly with other states who use the sea and also oppose China’s campaign to control its waters.

In her recent Foreign Affairs essay, The Taiwan Temptation: Why Beijing Might Resort to Force, Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that Chinese leaders now consider a military campaign to take Taiwan a real possibility and cautions that the United States cannot by itself alter Beijing’s calculus on Taiwan. The essay sparked a heated debate. In the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, several scholars — Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham, Bonny Lin and David Sacks, and Kharis Templeman — provide counterarguments to Mastro's analysis and she responds to their criticism. Read her complete rebuttal below.

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Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham, Bonny Lin and David Sacks, and Kharis Templeman all argue that China is unlikely to attempt armed unification with Taiwan. Although I appreciate their perspectives, they do not present any new evidence that would make me reconsider my assessment that the risk of Chinese aggression across the Taiwan Strait is real and growing. To the contrary, they repeat many of the increasingly dangerous misperceptions that I sought to dispel in my original article—namely, that China does not have the military capabilities to pull off an amphibious invasion, that the economic costs of an invasion would be sufficient to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that China can afford to wait indefinitely to achieve its most important national goal of unification. My critics assume that insofar as there are risks, they can be dealt with through relatively limited adjustments in U.S. policy and military posture — a position with which I still strongly disagree. 

Let’s take these arguments in order. My critics say that I have exaggerated China’s military capabilities and understated the difficulties of an invasion. But their assessments rely on outdated or largely irrelevant comparisons. Odell and Heginbotham, for instance, note that the United States needed more naval tonnage to capture Okinawa from Japan in 1945 than China has today. But this example is inapposite. Japan’s military was more than six million strong in 1945 and had been fighting for over a decade; Taiwan’s military consists of 88,000 personnel and two million reservists, of whom only 300,000 are required to complete even a five-week refresher training course. Tonnage, moreover, is not a useful metric. Modern navies have moved to lighter, more flexible fleets. Odell and Heginbotham point out that civilian ships were of only limited use in the Falklands War, but the United Kingdom used just 62 of them in that campaign. The People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia has many thousands of ships and is closer to a naval force than a civilian one. If China were to mobilize all its naval vessels, including its new large amphibious transport ships and civilian ships, it could hypothetically carry hundreds of thousands of troops across the 80-mile-wide Taiwan Strait in a short period of time. Even if the United States had enough warning to optimally position its submarines, it does not have enough munitions to target such a large force. 

For their part, Lin and Sacks argue that to believe China can take Taiwan by force is to fall for a Chinese misinformation campaign. They warn that “analysts should not accept at face value China’s claim that it could easily win a fight against Taiwan.” But no one, not even the cockiest of People’s Liberation Army analysts, argues that a full-scale attack on Taiwan would be easy, only that the PLA could prevail at an acceptable cost. Moreover, my assessment of Chinese military capabilities is not based on Chinese discourse or the results of war games alone. Reams of unbiased and rigorous analysis—from the U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report to Congress on China’s military modernization to Congressional Research Service reports on Chinese naval modernization to hundreds of studies by think tanks and defense-affiliated organizations, such as the RAND Corporation—suggest that the PLA has made unparalleled advances in the past two decades and could take on the United States in certain scenarios. Indeed, Heginbotham himself argued in 2017 that “the balance of power between the United States and China may be approaching a series of tipping points, first in contingencies close to the Chinese coast (e.g., Taiwan).” 

I do not mean to suggest that a Chinese invasion would be a cakewalk. Taiwan could get some shots in, but it does not have the ability to defend itself. Luckily, the United States would, I believe, come to Taiwan’s aid and could still prevail in many scenarios. Taiwan is far from a lost cause. But ten years ago, the United States would have prevailed in any scenario. Because there are now some scenarios in which U.S. strategists think the United States could lose, it is not unfathomable to think that Chinese strategists have come to a similar conclusion. 

My critics also argue that economic considerations will deter Beijing. Should China attempt to use force to assert control over Taiwan, the international response would be severe enough to imperil Xi’s ambitious development goals. But as I argued in my original article, Chinese analysts have good reason to think the international response would be weak enough to tolerate. China could even reap economic benefits from controlling Taiwan, whose manufacturers accounted for more than 60 percent of global revenue from semiconductors last year. The United States is heavily reliant on Taiwanese semiconductors. Should China take Taiwan, it could conceivably deprive the United States of this technology and gain an economic and military advantage. 

But economic costs or benefits, while part of Beijing’s calculus, are unlikely to be the determining factor. Xi’s top priority is protecting China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity—as Beijing defines it. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its militarization of the South China Sea, and its sanctions against countries that offend it, such as Australia or South Korea, all demonstrate that Chinese leaders are willing to subordinate economic considerations to considerations of power and prestige. In a speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in July, Xi warned against foreign attempts to bully or oppress China, declaring that “anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Those words should be taken seriously. 

Finally, my critics argue that China has no need to attempt to forcibly unify with Taiwan. Lin and Sacks think peaceful unification is working; Templeman believes China can wait indefinitely to resolve the issue. I disagree because I think unification is a top priority for the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan will not give up its autonomy without a fight. 

A Chinese invasion is by no means imminent or inevitable, but Beijing is now seriously considering initiating a conflict to gain political control over Taiwan, whereas in the past the only scenario in which it would have used force was to prevent Taipei from declaring independence. I agree with Templeman that China is unlikely to invade in the next four years (although I think this is largely because China could benefit from more time to prepare, not because it fears U.S. President Joe Biden’s resolve), but his argument that China can wait indefinitely is logically and empirically flawed. As I argued in my original article, Xi has made numerous statements that suggest he wants to achieve unification during his reign. It would be unwise to dismiss these as mere rhetoric, since he has repeatedly voiced his intention to assert control over other territorial claims before doing exactly that — in the South China Sea, by building military infrastructure and conducting naval drills, and in Hong Kong, by imposing a harsh national security law last year.

Templeman argues that if China believes the United States is in decline, then it has every reason to wait on Taiwan. But in the eyes of Chinese strategists, American decline actually hastens the need for action. Power transition theory, which holds that war becomes more likely as the gap between a rising power and an established great power diminishes, is also studied in Beijing. And although U.S. strategists fret that a rising China, dissatisfied with the U.S.-led international order, will become aggressive and start a conflagration, Chinese strategists fear a different pathway to war. They worry that the United States, unable to accept its inevitable decline, will make a dangerous last-ditch effort to hold on to its unrivaled great-power status. By this logic, a declining United States is more dangerous than a stable, ascendant one. 

Lin and Sacks make a different argument for why Beijing does not need to attempt armed unification. They believe that Chinese leaders remain committed to their long-standing approach of limited coercion coupled with economic incentives showcasing the benefits of unification because that strategy is working. As evidence of Beijing’s progress, Lin and Sacks point to polling that shows the majority of people in Taiwan support the status quo, not independence. But it is an enormous leap from not supporting independence to desiring or conceding to unification. As Lin and Sacks themselves acknowledge, China has employed this strategy of limited coercion and economic inducements for decades, but Taiwan is no closer to being a part of mainland China. In a September 2020 poll conducted by National Chengchi University, only six percent of Taiwanese citizens preferred eventual or immediate unification. So although Lin and Sacks are correct that Beijing will likely continue with its carrot-and-stick approach, it will still need to put boots on the ground to gain full political control of Taiwan. 

My critics also raise concerns about some of the policy implications of my argument. Odell and Heginbotham warn against focusing too much on the credibility of the U.S. military threat when it comes to deterrence, rightly highlighting the equal importance of reassurance. They warn that changes in U.S. policy toward Taiwan could convince Beijing that the United States now supports Taiwanese independence — a misperception that could lead to war. But my argument is for a change in posture, not in policy: the United States should develop the force posture and operational plans to deny China its objective in Taiwan and then credibly reveal these new capabilities. It should not make dangerous policy changes that would risk provoking a Chinese military response. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that even if a war breaks out over Taiwan and the United States wins, Washington should not demand Taiwan’s independence as one of the terms of peace. 

Templeman raises a separate concern: that highlighting the potential costs of defending Taiwan could bolster the case of those advocating that Washington abandon Taipei. If this were a serious worry, I would be the first to shift my work to more private channels. But those calling for the United States to reconsider its commitment to defend Taiwan are still in the minority, and the Biden administration has been clear that it would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an invasion.

Moreover, the reaction of the U.S. Department of Defense to the threat posed by China’s growing military power has been not to back down but to ramp up efforts to counter it. From new doctrines that enhance joint capabilities between the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy to base-resilience initiatives to efforts to improve U.S. early warning systems in the region, the Pentagon is firing on all cylinders to ensure it can deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a wide range of conflict scenarios. U.S. Cyber Command, the U.S. Space Force, and the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center were all established partly to counter Chinese advantages in those organizations’ respective domains. If Lin and Sacks are correct that China exaggerates its capabilities to try to convince the United States to give up, Beijing has achieved the opposite.   

In the end, all my critics highlight an important truth: the situation across the Taiwan Strait has been relatively stable for 70 years because of the United States. Washington has managed to convince Beijing that armed unification would fail and that China would pay a hefty price for trying. But China is not the same country it was 70 years ago. Its rapid military modernization, spectacular economic ascent, and growing global influence have changed Beijing’s calculus on many issues. It has taken a more assertive approach to international institutions; built one of the world’s largest, most capable militaries; and extended its economic influence deep and far throughout the world. It would be wishful thinking to assume that China has not also changed its thinking on Taiwan.

Indeed, although my critics argue that China is unlikely to invade, they still recommend that Taiwan improve its defenses and that the United States enhance its military posture in the region — not exactly a vote of confidence in Beijing’s restraint. I had hoped to convince skeptics that China is now seriously considering armed unification, but at least our debate has yielded a consensus that more must be done in Taipei and Washington to enhance deterrence across the Taiwan Strait.

This commentary was first published by The Lowy Institute.

Two recent naval exercises demonstrate the potential for Russia-China cooperation in the Indian Ocean, and how the two present a much greater threat to a continued US role and influence in the region than either would individually.

Last year, South Africa hosted a maritime exercise with Russia and China, the first-ever trilateral exercise among the three countries. Exercise Mosi was designed, according to the South African Navy, to “enhance interoperability and maritime security“ and showed the three countries’ willingness to work together to counter security threats at sea, such as terrorism and piracy. There were the obligatory social and cultural activities, and then military maneuvers that focused on a surface gunnery exercise, helicopter cross-deck landings, boarding operations and disaster control exercises.

China and Russia followed this up in December 2019 with another trilateral maritime exercise with Iran in the Gulf of Oman called Exercise Marine Security Belt. The exercises included live-fire drills and an anti-piracy exercise involving Iranian commandos. According to the Iranian naval commander, the exercises’ message was that “Iran cannot be isolated.” A Chinese spokesman stated: “The naval drills aim to deepen exchange and cooperation among the navies of the three countries, and display their strong will and capability to jointly maintain world peace and maritime security”.

Both China and Russia have gradually been increasing their presence in the Indian Ocean. Russia recently announced it would establish a naval facility in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. China opened its first overseas base in Djibouti in 2017, and China’s navy has increased operations in the Indian Ocean region over the past three decades.

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The Covid-19 crisis may have slowed further moves towards cooperation this year. Moscow just hosted the 12th BRICS summit virtually, which doesn’t lend itself to deep military engagement. But the trilateral exercises are notable because they signal Moscow’s and Beijing’s desire to cooperate in the region. And more importantly, they reveal that regional powers such as South Africa and Iran, as well as other countries, welcome the increased role of China and Russia.

Relations between South Africa and the United States were already strained when Pretoria agreed to the trilateral exercises last year. Under the Trump administration, the United States grew critical of South Africa’s UN voting record. Washington also declined to exempt the country from hikes in tariffs on US imports of steel and aluminum. In contrast, China has pledged the most investments of any country in South Africa. Russia has followed in its footsteps in building political, military and trade ties across sub-Saharan Africa.

Iran has even more reason to build relations with China and Russia. Since the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has strengthened its ties to China and Russia, using multi-billion-dollar loans from the two countries to resist US sanctions and deepening defense cooperation and intelligence sharing.

Smaller countries can also find the Russia-China nexus useful. According to a Chinese-language source, Sudan, a long-standing regional partner of China, first proposed hosting a Russian base in 2017 as a counterbalance “against aggressive acts of the United States”.

In other words, China and Russia together may be better equipped to compete with the United States and its allies in the Indian Ocean region for influence, for several reasons.

Moscow may be more willing than Beijing to play the ringleader role in organizing and directing opposition against the United States, but it doesn’t have the economic heft to make such cooperation a winning proposition for Indian Ocean states.

While China has considerable resources, it is more concerned about provoking the United States and potentially worsening already poor relations. China often argues that it is a different type of great power, one that does not engage in hegemonic behavior such as alliance formation. China is also keen to avoid sparking a countervailing coalition against it.

For these reasons, Beijing often tones down its rhetoric about the nature of its relationship with Russia. China claimed the Indian Ocean exercises do “not target any third party”. For Russia, however, overtly undermining the United States is a key component of its strategy and plays well domestically for Putin.

On the other hand, China has the economic resources to wield influence and invest heavily in Indian Ocean countries. In Pakistan alone, Beijing has pledged an estimated $87 billion in funding and completed roughly $20 billion worth of projects. Recently, Beijing and Tehran reportedly agreed to a 25-year deal to expand China’s investment in Iranian banking, telecommunications, ports and railways in exchange for oil.

While China and Russia are nowhere near dominating the Indian Ocean region militarily, their combined influence may promise trouble for the United States and its partners. The two countries will likely work together to inure their partners to international pressure, including over human rights violations. And those partners will receive security benefits (such as military access) and economic benefits (such as preferential economic ties) in return. Although it seems a bit exaggerated, there is some truth to Iranian Admiral Hossein Khanzadi’s declaration that strategic coordination with Russia and China means “the era of American free action in the region is over”.

China and Russia may be slow in enhancing their strategic coordination in the Indian Ocean slowly, but the intent is there. The United States and its allies may still be dominant militarily. But we should be careful not to fall under the illusion that this guarantees influence. With China and Russia presenting themselves as strong alternative powers, the United States and like-minded countries have to work that much harder to promote sustainable economic development, protect international rules and norms, and ensure peace and security in the region.

In collaboration with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC presented session five of the New Economy Conference, "Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade, and Technology," on May 19. The program featured distinguished speakers Ambassador Craig Allen, President of the US-China Business Council; David K. Cheng, Chair and Managing Partner of China & Asia Pacific Practice at Nixon Peabody LLP; James Green, Senior Research Fellow at the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University; and Anja Manuel, Co-Founder and Principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC. The session was opened by Darlene Chiu Bryant, Executive Director of GlobalSF, and moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive. Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined. While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy. Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests--and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade. But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors. Ambassador Craig Allen, David Cheng, James Green, and Anja Manuel explored the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. Watch now: 

This essay was originally published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Chinese leaders will continue to pay lip service to peaceful unification until the day the war breaks out, but their actions increasingly suggest that they have something else in mind. As tensions with the United States have heated up, China has accelerated its military operations in the vicinity of Taiwan, conducting 380 incursions into the island’s air defense identification zone in 2020 alone. In April of this year, China sent its largest-ever fleet, 25 fighters and bombers, into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. Clearly, Xi is no longer trying to avoid escalation at all costs now that his military is capable of contesting the U.S. military presence in the region. Long gone are the days of the 1996 crisis over Taiwan, when the United States dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to sail near the strait and China backed off. Beijing did not like being deterred back then, and it spent the next 25 years modernizing its military so that it would not be so next time.  

Much of that modernization, including updates to hardware, organization, force structure, and training, was designed to enable the People’s Liberation Army to invade and occupy Taiwan. Xi expanded the military’s capabilities further, undertaking the most ambitious restructuring of the PLA since its founding, aimed specifically at enabling Chinese forces to conduct joint operations in which the air force, the navy, the army, and the strategic rocket force fight seamlessly together, whether during an amphibious landing, a blockade, or a missile attack—exactly the kinds of operations needed for armed unification. Xi urgently pushed these risky reforms, many unpopular with the military, to ensure that the PLA could fight and win wars by 2020.

The voices in Beijing arguing that it is time to use these newfound military capabilities against Taiwan have grown louder, a telling development in an era of greater censorship. Several retired military officers have argued publicly that the longer China waits, the harder it will be to take control of Taiwan. Articles in state-run news outlets and on popular websites have likewise urged China to act swiftly. And if public opinion polls are to be believed, the Chinese people agree that the time has come to resolve the Taiwan issue once and for all. According to a survey by the state-run Global Times, 70 percent of mainlanders strongly support using force to unify Taiwan with the mainland, and 37 percent think it would be best if the war occurred in three to five years. 

The Chinese analysts and officials I have spoken to have revealed similar sentiments. Even moderate voices have admitted that not only are calls for armed unification proliferating within the CCP but also they themselves have recommended military action to senior Chinese leadership. Others in Beijing dismiss concerns about a Chinese invasion as overblown, but in the same breath, they acknowledge that Xi is surrounded by military advisers who tell him with confidence that China can now regain Taiwan by force at an acceptable cost. 

Battle Ready

Unless the United States or Taiwan moves first to alter the status quo, Xi will likely consider initiating armed unification only if he is confident that his military can successfully gain control of the island. Can it? 

The answer is a matter of debate, and it depends on what it would take to compel Taiwan’s capitulation. Beijing is preparing for four main campaigns that its military planners believe could be necessary to take control of the island. The first consists of joint PLA missile and airstrikes to disarm Taiwanese targets—initially military and government, then civilian—and thereby force Taipei’s submission to Chinese demands. The second is a blockade operation in which China would attempt to cut the island off from the outside world with everything from naval raids to cyberattacks. The third involves missile and airstrikes against U.S. forces deployed nearby, with the aim of making it difficult for the United States to come to Taiwan’s aid in the initial stages of the conflict. The fourth and final campaign is an island landing effort in which China would launch an amphibious assault on Taiwan—perhaps taking its offshore islands first as part of a phased invasion or carpet bombing them as the navy, the army, and the air force focused on Taiwan proper. 

Among defense experts, there is little debate about China’s ability to pull off the first three of these campaigns—the joint strike, the blockade, and the counterintervention mission. Neither U.S. efforts to make its regional bases more resilient nor Taiwanese missile defense systems are any match for China’s ballistic and cruise missiles, which are the most advanced in the world. China could quickly destroy Taiwan’s key infrastructure, block its oil imports, and cut off its Internet access—and sustain such a blockade indefinitely. According to Lonnie Henley, a retired U.S. intelligence officer and China specialist, “U.S. forces could probably push through a trickle of relief supplies, but not much more.” And because China has such a sophisticated air defense system, the United States would have little hope of regaining air or naval superiority by attacking Chinese missile transporters, fighters, or ships. 

But China’s fourth and final campaign—an amphibious assault on the island itself—is far from guaranteed to succeed. According to a 2020 U.S. Department of Defense report, “China continues to build capabilities that would contribute to a full-scale invasion,” but “an attempt to invade Taiwan would likely strain China’s armed forces and invite international intervention.” The then commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Philip Davidson, said in March that China will have the ability to successfully invade Taiwan in six years. Other observers think it will take longer, perhaps until around 2030 or 2035. 

What everyone agrees is that China has made significant strides in its ability to conduct joint operations in recent years and that the United States needs adequate warning to mount a successful defense. As Beijing hones its spoofing and jamming technologies, it may be able to scramble U.S. early warning systems and thereby keep U.S. forces in the dark in the early hours of an attack. Xi’s military reforms have improved China’s cyberwarfare and electronic warfare capabilities, which could be trained on civilian, as well as military, targets. As Dan Coats, then the U.S. director of national intelligence, testified in 2019, Beijing is capable of offensive cyberattacks against the United States that would cause “localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure.” China’s offensive weaponry, including ballistic and cruise missiles, could also destroy U.S. bases in the western Pacific in a matter of days.

In light of these enhanced capabilities, many U.S. experts worry that China could take control of Taiwan before the United States even had a chance to react. Recent war games conducted by the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation have shown that a military clash between the United States and China over Taiwan would likely result in a U.S. defeat, with China completing an all-out invasion in just days or weeks.

Ultimately, on the question of whether China will use force, Chinese leaders’ perceptions of their chances of victory will matter more than their actual chances of victory. For that reason, it is bad news that Chinese analysts and officials increasingly express confidence that the PLA is well prepared for a military confrontation with the United States over Taiwan. Although Chinese strategists acknowledge the United States’ general military superiority, many have come to believe that because China is closer to Taiwan and cares about it more, the local balance of power tips in Beijing’s favor. 

As U.S.-Chinese tensions have risen, China’s state-sponsored media outlets have grown more vocal in their praise for the country’s military capabilities. In April, the Global Times described an unnamed military expert saying that “the PLA exercises are not only warnings, but also show real capabilities and pragmatically practicing reunifying the island if it comes to that.” If China chooses to invade, the analyst added, the Taiwanese military “won’t stand a chance.”

Go Fast, Go Slow

Once China has the military capabilities to finally solve its Taiwan problem, Xi could find it politically untenable not to do so, given the heightened nationalism of both the CCP and the public. At this point, Beijing will likely work its way up to a large-scale military campaign, beginning with “gray zone” tactics, such as increased air and naval patrols, and continuing on to coercive diplomacy aimed at forcing Taipei to negotiate a political resolution. 

Psychological warfare will also be part of Beijing’s playbook. Chinese exercises around Taiwan not only help train the PLA but also wear down Taiwan’s military and demonstrate to the world that the United States cannot protect the island. The PLA wants to make its presence in the Taiwan Strait routine. The more common its activities there become, the harder it will be for the United States to determine when a Chinese attack is imminent, making it easier for the PLA to present the world with a fait accompli.

At the same time that it ramps up its military activities in the strait, China will continue its broader diplomatic campaign to eliminate international constraints on its ability to use force, privileging economic rights over political ones in its relations with other countries and within international bodies, downplaying human rights, and, above all, promoting the norms of sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs. Its goal is to create the narrative that any use of force against Taiwan would be defensive and justified given Taipei’s and Washington’s provocations. All these coercive and diplomatic efforts will move China closer to unification, but they won’t get it all the way there. Taiwan is not some unoccupied atoll in the South China Sea that China can successfully claim so long as other countries do not respond militarily. China needs Taiwan’s complete capitulation, and that will likely require a significant show of force. 

If Beijing decides to initiate a campaign to forcibly bring Taiwan under Chinese sovereignty, it will try to calibrate its actions to discourage U.S. intervention. It might, for example, begin with low-cost military options, such as joint missile and airstrikes, and only escalate to a blockade, a seizure of offshore islands, and, finally, a full-blown invasion if its earlier actions fail to compel Taiwan to capitulate. Conducted slowly over the course of many months, such a gradual approach to armed unification would make it difficult for the United States to mount a strong response, especially if U.S. allies and partners in the region wish to avoid a war at all costs. A gradual, coercive approach would also force Washington to initiate direct hostilities between the two powers. And if China has not fired a shot at U.S. forces, the United States would find it harder to make the case at home and in Asian capitals for a U.S. military intervention to turn back a slow-motion Chinese invasion. An incremental approach would have domestic political benefits for Beijing, as well. If China received more international pushback than expected or became embroiled in a campaign against the United States that started to go badly, it would have more opportunities to pull back and claim “mission accomplished.”  

But China could decide to escalate much more rapidly if it concluded that the United States was likely to intervene militarily regardless of whether Beijing moved swiftly or gradually. Chinese military strategists believe that if they give the United States time to mobilize and amass firepower in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait, China’s chances of victory will decrease substantially. As a result, they could decide to preemptively hit U.S. bases in the region, crippling Washington’s ability to respond.

In other words, U.S. deterrence—to the extent that it is based on a credible threat to intervene militarily to protect Taiwan—could actually incentivize an attack on U.S. forces once Beijing has decided to act. The more credible the American threat to intervene, the more likely China would be to hit U.S. forces in the region in its opening salvo. But if China thought the United States might stay out of the conflict, it would decline to attack U.S. forces in the region, since doing so would inevitably bring the United States into the war. 

Wishful Thinking

What might dissuade Xi from pursuing armed unification, if not U.S. military might? Most Western analysts believe that Xi’s devotion to his signature plan to achieve the “Chinese dream” of “national rejuvenation,” which requires him to maintain economic growth and improve China’s international standing, will deter him from using military force and risking derailing his agenda. They argue that the economic costs of a military campaign against Taiwan would be too high, that China would be left completely isolated internationally, and that Chinese occupation of the island would tie up Beijing for decades to come. 

But these arguments about the cost of armed unification are based more on American projections and wishful thinking than on fact. A protracted, high-intensity conflict would indeed be costly for China, but Chinese war planners have set out to avoid this scenario; China is unlikely to attack Taiwan unless it is confident that it can achieve a quick victory, ideally before the United States can even respond. 

Even if China found itself in a protracted war with the United States, however, Chinese leaders may believe they have social and economic advantages that would enable them to outlast the Americans. They see the Chinese people as more willing to make sacrifices for the cause of Taiwan than the American people. Some argue, too, that China’s large domestic market makes it less reliant on international trade than many other countries. (The more China economically decouples from the United States and the closer it gets to technological self-sufficiency, the greater this advantage will be.) Chinese leaders could also take comfort in their ability to quickly transition to an industrial wartime footing. The United States has no such ability to rapidly produce military equipment.

International isolation and coordinated punishment of Beijing might seem like a greater threat to Xi’s great Chinese experiment. Eight of China’s top ten trading partners are democracies, and nearly 60 percent of China’s exports go to the United States and its allies. If these countries responded to a Chinese assault on Taiwan by severing trade ties with China, the economic costs could threaten the developmental components of Xi’s rejuvenation plan.

But Chinese leaders have good reason to suspect that international isolation and opprobrium would be relatively mild. When China began to cultivate strategic partnerships in the mid-1990s, it required other countries and organizations, including the European Union, to sign long-term agreements to prioritize these relationships and proactively manage any tensions or disruptions. All these agreements mention trade, investment, economic cooperation, and working together in the United Nations. Most include provisions in support of Beijing’s position on Taiwan. (Since 1996, China has convinced more than a dozen countries to switch their diplomatic recognition to Beijing, leaving Taiwan with only 15 remaining allies.) In other words, many of China’s most important trading partners have already sent a strong signal that they will not let Taiwan derail their relationships with Beijing. 

Whether compelling airlines to take Taiwan off their maps or pressuring Paramount Pictures to remove the Taiwanese flag from the Top Gun hero Maverick’s jacket, China has largely succeeded in convincing many countries that Taiwan is an internal matter that they should stay out of. Australia has been cautious about expanding its military cooperation with the United States and reluctant even to consider joint contingency planning over Taiwan (although the tide seems to be shifting in Canberra). Opinion polls show that most Europeans value their economic ties with China and the United States roughly the same and don’t want to be caught in the middle. Southeast Asia feels similarly, with polls showing that the majority of policymakers and thought leaders from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations believe the best approach to U.S.-Chinese sparring is for the association to “enhance its own resilience and unity to fend off their pressures.” One South Korean official put it more memorably in an interview with The Atlantic, comparing the need to pick sides in the U.S.-Chinese dispute to “asking a child whether you like your dad or your mom.” Such attitudes suggest that the United States would struggle to convince its allies to isolate China. And if the international reaction to Beijing’s crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang is any indication, the most China can expect after an invasion of Taiwan are some symbolic sanctions and words of criticism. 

The risk that a bloody insurgency in Taiwan will drag on for years and drain Beijing of resources is no more of a deterrent—and the idea that it would be says more about the United States’ scars from Afghanistan and Iraq than about likely scenarios for Taiwan. The PLA’s military textbooks assume the need for a significant campaign to consolidate power after its troops have landed and broken through Taiwan’s coastal defenses, but they do not express much concern about it. This may be because although the PLA has not fought a war since 1979, China has ample experience with internal repression and dedicates more resources to that mission than to its military. The People’s Armed Police boasts at least 1.5 million members, whose primary mission is suppressing opposition. Compared with the military task of invading and seizing Taiwan in the first place, occupying it probably looks like a piece of cake.

For all these reasons, Xi may believe he can regain control of Taiwan without jeopardizing his Chinese dream. It is telling that in the flood of commentary on Taiwan that has come out of China in recent months, few articles have mentioned the costs of war or the potential reaction from the international community. As one retired high-level military officer explained to me recently, China’s main concern isn’t the costs; it’s sovereignty. Chinese leaders will always fight for what is theirs. And if China defeats the United States along the way, it will become the new dominant power in the Asia-Pacific. The prospects are tantalizing. The worst-case scenario, moreover, is that the United States reacts more quickly and effectively than expected, forcing China to declare victory after limited gains and go home. Beijing would live to capture Taiwan another day. 

No Exit

These realities make it very difficult for the United States to alter China’s calculus on Taiwan. Richard Haass and David Sacks of the Council on Foreign Relations have argued in Foreign Affairs that the United States could improve cross-strait deterrence by ending its long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity”—that is, declining to state specifically whether and how it would come to Taiwan’s defense. But the main problem is not U.S. resolve, since Chinese leaders already assume the United States will intervene. What matters to Xi and other top Chinese leaders is whether they think the PLA can prevail even in the face of U.S. intervention. For that reason, successful deterrence requires convincing China that the United States can prevent it from achieving its military objectives in Taiwan, a difficult undertaking that would come with its own downsides and potential risks. 

One way to convince Beijing would be to develop the capabilities to physically stop it from taking Taiwan—deterrence by denial. This would involve positioning missile launchers and armed drones near Taiwan and more long-range munitions, especially antiship weapons, in places such as Guam, Japan, and the Philippines. These weapons would help repel a Chinese amphibious and air assault in the initial stages of an attack. If Chinese leaders knew their forces could not physically make it across the strait, they would not consider trying unless Taiwan took the truly unacceptable step of declaring independence. 

The United States would also need to invest heavily in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in the region. The attractiveness of a full-on invasion from China’s perspective lies in the possibility of surprise: the United States may not be able to respond militarily until after Beijing has taken control of the island and the war is over. Leaving aside the operational challenges of such a response, it would be politically difficult for any U.S. president to authorize an attack on China when no shots were being fired at the time. 

An enhanced U.S. military and intelligence presence in the Indo-Pacific would be sufficient to deter most forms of armed unification, but it wouldn’t prevent China from using force altogether. Beijing could still try to use missile strikes to convince Taiwan to bend to its will. To deter all Chinese military aggression, the United States would therefore need to be prepared to destroy China’s missile batteries—which would involve U.S. strikes on the Chinese mainland. Even if U.S. intelligence capabilities improve, the United States would risk mistaking Chinese military exercises for preparations for an invasion—and igniting a war by mistake. China knows this and may conclude the United States would not take the chance. 

The most effective way to deter Chinese leaders from attacking Taiwan is also the most difficult: to convince them that armed unification would cost China its rejuvenation. And the United States cannot do this alone. Washington would need to persuade a large coalition of allies to commit to a coordinated economic, political, and military response to any Chinese aggression. And that, unfortunately, remains a remote possibility, since many countries are unwilling to risk their economic prospects, let alone a major-power war, in order to defend a small democratic island. 

Ultimately, then, there is no quick and easy fix to the escalating tensions across the strait. The only way the United States can ensure Taiwan’s security is to make an invasion impossible for Beijing or to convince Chinese leaders that using force will cause them to be pariahs. For the last 25 years, however, Beijing has sought to prevent Washington from doing either. Unfortunately for Taiwan, only now is the United States waking up to the new reality.

This essay was first published in the political quarterly Democracy Journal. It is part of a four-essay collection, titled The Stakes in Asia, on the future of U.S.-Asian relations. This essay focuses on the nations of Southeast Asia, the three other essays on China, Japan, and South and North Korea. 

Geography and geology are not the same. Of the five mainland countries, four have seacoasts; only Laos is land-locked. All of the six maritime states are entirely or partly archipelagic. But Malaysia and Singapore are subcontinental in that they occupy the southernmost end of peninsular Southeast Asia. A projected three-stranded set of overland railroads connecting Malaysia and Singapore to mainland China, if completed, could socioeconomically enhance their subcontinental character. The strands would run southward from Kunming, the capital city of China’s Yunnan province, through Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam to Bangkok in Thailand and onward through Malaysia to Singapore. Completing these north-south connections has been a priority of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Fears of “mainlandization”—Sinification—have arisen in that context. China’s presence is already amply manifest in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, where economic and cultural enclaves have formed around the influxes of tourists and immigrants from the PRC. Expatriate and local Chinese dominate the economy of Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, where young Ma Kyal Sin died. Mandarin is widely spoken there. If the BRI succeeds, if the north-south tracks are laid and maintained, and if traffic then flourishes back and forth to the mutual “win-win” benefit of China and all of the five Southeast Asian economies along the way, Beijing could further enlarge its footprint in the region.

Could does not mean will. The world economy shrank by more than 4 percent in 2020. Infrastructure is costly, and its returns are long-term. To varying extents in different countries, envisioned connectivity has become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, as governments have closed borders to reduce transmission of the virus and its variants. In 2019-2020, the pace of overseas lending by China’s policy banks slowed, and Chinese spending on megaprojects in the BRI fell to its lowest level ever. China’s latest five-year plan calls for “dual circulation,” abroad as well as at home, but the domestic economy is given priority.

That said, China’s economic growth in 2021 could reach 8 percent and thereby fuel Beijing’s campaign for influence in mainland Southeast Asia. In Laos, for example, aggressive Chinese lenders and corrupt local elites have indebted that country to the point that its lucrative electricity exports may soon be controlled by China. As one of the poorest members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Laos needs those revenues. Majority control over the country’s network of high-voltage power lines could give Beijing leverage that it could wield to ensure that Laos remains a compliant “friend” of China.

As illustrated by the case of China-facing Laos, the distribution of despotism in Southeast Asia tends to reinforce the mainland-maritime divide. “Many have said over the years that ASEAN is a club of dictators,” a Human Rights Watch official observed in 2016.

That harsh judgment is less of an exaggeration than one would wish. According to Freedom House, six of the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are “Not Free”: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. More than half of ASEAN is despotic by this measure, and of those six authoritarian members, five are on the mainland. The only maritime autocracy is tiny Brunei, an absolute monarchy perched on the coast of Borneo facing the South China Sea. The remaining four ASEAN states—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore—are all maritime and rated “Partly Free.” The lone “Free” country in the region is Timor-Leste, which occupies three neighboring bits of territory in the Indonesian archipelago and is not a member of ASEAN, although it would like to join.

Three crude descriptions follow: First, mainland Southeast Asia is autocratic. Second, maritime Southeast Asia is semi-democratic—a middle or mixed position reflected in the balance between the two smallest sea-linked states by population, autocratic Brunei and democratic Timor-Leste. Third, ASEAN’s membership tilts authoritarian, being six-tenths autocratic, four-tenths semi-democratic, and zero tenths democratic by Freedom House standards.

China’s Role: ‘Stability’ Over Democracy

How should China and its strategy be factored into these comparisons? Is geography destiny? Xi Jinping and his advisors would like their Southeast Asian counterparts to think so. Consider Beijing’s proposal for an ASEAN-China Community of Common Destiny. Does “community of common destiny” express China’s empathy, its presumption, or its intention to possess and preempt? Beijing wants its Southeast Asian neighbors to treat the idea of sharing a community as reassuring proof of how much and how sincerely China cares about them and their region. But a common destiny precludes divergent scenarios and destinations. If China’s destiny is to remain a party-state dictatorship under one leader for life, does Beijing want that same fate to encompass the rest of Southeast Asia? Does it strive to “mainlandize” the entire region by reinforcing top-down rule in “Not Free” Southeast Asia and making the “Partly Free” maritime states “Not Free” as well?

China is not evangelically despotic toward its neighbors in an ideological sense. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is an unexportable mishmash—oxymoronic in theory, contingent in practice, and parochial by its very name. As a candidate for travel beyond the PRC, it lacks legs. Nor is China counting on converting Southeast Asians into loyal fans of a Chinese model. Beijing is vigorously trying to bolster its soft power and incentivize its neighbors to acknowledge and join a Chinese sphere of regional influence voluntarily. The ASEAN states collectively are already China’s largest trading partner and vice versa. But if public diplomacy and economic embraces fail, it is fatalism, not communism, that Beijing is betting on.

Shorn of all pretense, Xi Jinping’s hope is that China’s southern neighbors will look at a map and give up. Why? Because, as the PRC’s current top diplomat Yang Jiechi famously told his ASEAN counterparts in 2010, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” As if big China were saying to its small neighbors: Our common destiny is to experience and accept the disparity between us, for we and you are destined to remain unequal, whether you like it or not. Take the South China Sea. We—the PRC—were always destined to absorb nearly all of that body of water based on Chinese sovereignty “formed over the course of over two thousand years,” to quote Jiechi in 2016.

The South China Sea is not lebensraum. It is not viewed in Beijing the way Berlin saw Poland in August 1939. Nevertheless, Xi’s China continues to manufacture destiny with Chinese characteristics in the heartwater of Southeast Asia by creating maritime facts on the water that Southeast Asians cannot reverse. These include China’s forcible possession of land features claimed by ASEAN’s littoral states; its conversion of those features into military bases from which it can threaten the region; and its orchestration of at-sea collisions, near-collisions, encirclements, and swarmings to stop Southeast Asians from fishing or from lifting undersea oil and gas even within their own Exclusive Economic Zones, all in clear violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing hopes that someday its control over the South China Sea and the land features it has weaponized there will be “just a fact” that ASEAN’s members will have had to accept, their lack of China’s size and strength having convinced them that they have no choice but to kowtow. Rather than trying to seed the region with despotisms in China’s image, Beijing prefers to encourage Southeast Asian fatalism, and with it the passivity and resignation to subservience that sheer necessity would imply.

Although China’s political template is authoritarian, Xi is not an evangelist for autocracy in Southeast Asia. If, as has been claimed, Xi’s China is “ideologically bankrupt,” it has no surplus in ideas to spend convincing the world to mimic its doctrine. As exportable advice, the formula that Beijing does represent—regime legitimation by economic performance—is more pragmatic than ideological. There are, nevertheless, three ways in which Chinese foreign policy in Southeast Asia affects, and is affected by, the more despotic character of ASEAN’s mainland compared with its maritime member states.

As it seeks to influence its neighbors and the world beyond, Xi’s China may be ideologically promiscuous. But Beijing does love stability. When Adam Prezorskwi described democracy as “institutionalized uncertainty,” he noted its potentially beneficial effect. The unpredictability of electoral outcomes in a democratic system is stabilizing insofar as it motivates a losing candidate not to turn against the system but rather to run again within it. The chance of victory—positive uncertainty—may warrant another try.

But institutionalized uncertainty is anathema to the Communist Party of China. The power and authority of the CPC under a could-be leader for life supplies the institutionalized certainty that a stable dictatorship needs—or thinks it needs—to survive. Rapid economic growth and the systematic forestalling of civil society in China continue at least to postpone recourse to another Tiananmen massacre. In roughly comparable ways, institutionalized repression in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam has helped keep those dictatorships stable—so far. Beijing’s faith in the stabilizing power of institutionalized certainty makes dealing with foreign despots a subjectively rational choice. And doing so can at least simplify Chinese diplomacy. Democracies have more actors who need to be taken into account, including critics of China whose barbs are protected speech.

Consider Myanmar. Given Beijing’s economic and strategic stake in using Myanmar as a way station for greater Chinese access to the Indian Ocean, Xi is probably furious that Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has rendered Myanmar unstable and unpredictable. The general’s regime is not innately pro-China. But Beijing likely calculates that a democratic alternative to military rule could jeopardize China’s position even more. In the days immediately following the Tatmadaw’s seizure of power, Beijing did not even acknowledge that a coup had taken place, calling it a mere “cabinet reshuffle” and blocking the UN Security Council from criticizing what had occurred. Inside Myanmar, anti-China protests ensued, with accusations stemming from rumors that China might even have encouraged the coup due to its own despotic character and inclination. The rumors sound unfounded, but the fact that they circulated among democracy-minded opponents of the junta could only reinforce Beijing’s preference for military rule.

Xi’s China craves praise. Chinese “wolf warrior” diplomats in Southeast Asia have not been shy about urging and thus implicitly requiring recipients of Chinese “gifts,” including vaccines for local use against the COVID-19 virus, to publicly thank China for its generosity—preferably in profuse terms. In a democracy that values personal worth more than hierarchical deference and obligatory gratitude, kowtowing may be unpopular. In contrast, under a despot, obligatory upward fawning may be normal and thus more easily performed to please a foreign donor. An authoritarian patron may welcome such expressions of fealty as signs of submission. In addition, China’s often visceral dismissal of foreign criticism, compared with the normality of critique in democratic states, would suggest that Beijing prefers to deal with leaders of governments that enforce gratitude for reasons of material dependence on China, as opposed to those who refuse to self-censor. Looking back and forward toward the future, China’s history as a presumptuous empire and its Xi-led quest for “rejuvenation” to recover former glory, before its “century of humiliation” by the West, are not conducive to comportment as a Westphalian state dealing on a basis of equality with other states.

Third and finally, if authoritarian China is about product with little regard for process, whereas democratic society reverses those priorities, it stands to reason that China’s policymakers may, other things being equal, prefer to partner with autocratic heads of state who can get things done, never mind how.

Pushing Back and Looking Forward

Deterministically structural explanations of China’s influence in Southeast Asia—size, proximity, a magnetic economy—overlook the human factor: the capacity of the region’s people and leaders to question and reject dependence on tectonic conditions that stack the deck in China’s favor. To Beijing’s likely chagrin, that capacity is amply evident in the opinions of elite-level Southeast Asians who follow their countries’ foreign affairs. The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s consecutive annual surveys of the views of these individuals have revealed their rising mistrust of China and, conversely, their rising trust of the United States.

Sampled in 2018, these elites mistrusted China and the United States in equal measure. In that year, 52 percent had little to no confidence that China would “do the right thing” in world affairs, while 51 percent said the same thing about the United States. But in 2019 and 2020, that pox on both houses has consistently and markedly evolved in China’s disfavor. By 2020, 63 percent of the Southeast Asian respondents mistrusted China, compared with 31 percent who mistrusted America. If that shift seems odd in light of the destabilizing idiosyncrasies of Donald Trump, it should be noted that the 2020 survey was conducted late in the final year of his presidency and the questions were about what China and the United States could be expected to do in the future. China’s hope for loyal neighbors received a further blow in the answers to a question about whether ASEAN, were it forced to align itself with one of the two big rivals, should side with China or with the United States. Although 39 percent of the respondents opted for China, 62 percent chose the United States.

Opinions are malleable. The popularities of China and the United States will fluctuate in tandem with future events. Although the survey research cited above has portrayed China as untrustworthy, expansionists in Beijing could take comfort in the data on Southeast Asian perceptions of relative power as a matter of fact, trustworthiness aside. Asked in 2020 which country or regional organization (such as ASEAN or the European Union) was the most influential economic power in Southeast Asia, 76 percent said China. Merely 7 percent named America. China won as well, though by a less overwhelming margin, when the same question was asked regarding political and strategic influence. That China is most consequential in those regards garnered 49 percent agreement, compared with 30 percent who thought the United States fitted that description. In effect, the survey inadvertently endorsed China’s cultivation of acquiescent fatalism in Southeast Asia—destiny over opportunity, realpolitik over moralpolitik—to the marginal advantage of Beijing.

China is not significantly or consistently more or less popular in mainland Southeast Asia than it is in the maritime part of the region. Mistrust of China, for example, is highest in mainland Vietnam and in the maritime Philippines, albeit for different reasons. The Vietnamese remember their history of resistance to domination by China and resent its current bullying in the South China Sea. The latter behavior also angers Filipinos, whose own post-colonial history has tended, with exceptions, to involve accommodation with the United States. But the existence of a structural straitjacket that a Sinocentric understanding of “common destiny” would imply is more evident in the countries located closer to China that are accordingly less able to ignore their huge, overbearing, and censorial neighbor.

China is not willfully spreading autocracy in Southeast Asia. China’s relations with its neighbors are motivated by interest not ideology. With the stark exception of Vietnam, however, one can envision an authoritarian symbiosis of sorts developing between despotic China and potential satellite despotisms along its southern land border. Myanmar could become a test case in this context. If the junta crushes the opposition, if ASEAN does little more than slap the wrist of its murderous member, and if Western outrage drives the Tatmadaw into China’s arms, the growth of a Chinese sphere of influence based on authoritarian connivance could someday even split ASEAN roughly into its northwestern-subcontinental and southeastern-archipelagic parts.

Nevertheless, at least for now, the bravery of the martyred Ma Kyal Sin and her co-protestors in Myanmar, and of their counterparts in Thailand protesting against their own military regime, evokes, at least for now, a less despotic and subordinated future for Southeast Asia. Authoritarian instability is not an oxymoron. China’s own domestic stability and prosperity are not guaranteed. Its soft power deficit is real, and its overreaching under Xi Jinping could continue to vindicate Southeast Asian distrust. In the months and years to come, major outside actors—the United States, Japan, and India among others—could work with autonomy-seeking Southeast Asian states to slow the Chinese juggernaut in Southeast Asia.

A fresh wave of democratization in Southeast Asia is not on the horizon. But the destiny of even the already undemocratic mainland portion of Southeast Asia is not—not yet at least—made in Beijing.

The period in U.S. policy toward China that was broadly described as ‘engagement’ has come to an end, said Dr. Kurt M. Campbell, deputy assistant to the President and coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs at the National Security Council, speaking at Shorenstein APARC’s 2021 Oksenberg Conference. “The dominant paradigm is going to be competition. Our goal is to make that a stable, peaceful competition that brings out the best of us,” he added.

This year’s Oksenberg Conference examined President Biden’s China strategy, how it might differ from that of the Trump administration, and how the United States can best pursue its values and interests amidst China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. Campbell headlined the online event along with Laura Rosenberger, special assistant to the President and senior director for China and Taiwan at the National Security Council. Following their remarks, Campbell and Rosenberger joined the Freeman Spogli Institute Director Michael McFaul for a fireside chat. Watch their statements and discussion:

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Shifting Strategic Focus

The lion share of history in the twenty-first century will be written in Asia, noted Campbell, and for the first time the United States is earnestly shifting its strategic focus, economic interests, and military might to the Indo-Pacific. America’s approach to the region has been underpinned by the post-WWII narratives of a U.S.-led international order centered around deployed engagement to preserve stability and peaceful conflict resolution, economic openness, and multilateralism. Now this U.S.-led ‘operating system of the Indo-Pacific’ is challenged.

Over the past several years, Beijing has signaled its determination to play a more assertive role on the international stage. Across the board, said Campbell, we have witnessed examples of China’s shift to “harsh power, or hard power” and its strategically destabilizing impacts — from the conflict on India’s northern border to an “undeclared economic campaign” against Australia, “wolf warrior” diplomacy, stepped-up military interactions in the South China Sea, regular military actions across the Taiwan Strait, and increasing pressure on Japan.

“We all understand that China, as a rising power, takes issue with certain elements of the existing, dominant system and wants to revise them,” Campbell said. “We believe that the best way to engage a more assertive China is to work with allies, partners, and friends.”

Granted, no country is eager to pick sides in the U.S.-China rivalry, he added, and, in the post-Trump era, “one of the biggest challenges of the Biden administration is to try and underscore and reassure allies and friends that we’re going to continue our stabilizing role.”

Three Pillars of U.S. China Policy

Working with allies and partners, which is one of the three pillars of the Biden administration’s China policy, is not about building an anti-China coalition, emphasized Laura Rosenberger. “What we are seeking to do is to show that democracies deliver” and work for the benefit of the American people and the world’s people. “That provides a competitive counteroffer” to China’s more coercive ways of engagement with its counterparts and its efforts to reshape rules in ways that threaten democracies.

Another pillar of the Biden administration’s China policy, Rosenberger explained, is investing at home and strengthening ourselves domestically. The need to do so is especially urgent not only due to the health and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but also in response to intractable challenges in American society — such as economic disparities and the cracks in our democracy — and to the imperative to out-innovate and outperform China in the technology space, where much of the competition between the two powers lies.

The third aspect of U.S. policy towards China, said Rosenberger, is “Countering China where we need to and cooperating with China where it is in our interest to do so. We think this is how we can manage competition in a way that will prevent us from moving into conflict but that will allow us to maximize cooperation.” She noted that this approach has already played out in the initial high-level engagements of the Biden team with Beijing.

The Quad and Beyond

Still, Campbell admitted, the United States will need to recreate elements of its power, dispel fears of American decline in the international arena, and convince the entire Indo-Pacific of its determination to continue to play a leading role on the international stage. It also must have a positive economic vision for its engagement in the region. 

“The operating system of the Indo-Pacific is under substantial strain,” he said. It will need to be reinvigorated not just by the United States but also by other countries that use it, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and countries in Europe that want to do more in Asia.

“Our goal is to enhance deterrence,” concluded Campbell, and to bring other countries into the effort. “We’re ambitious about the Quad,” he said, noting that the Biden administration is looking to convene an in-person meeting of its Quad partners in the fall and underscoring the administration’s willingness to welcome into its efforts “other countries that believe that they’d like to engage and work with us.”

Media Coverage of the Conference

• Bloomberg Politics
• Bloomberg News
• Forbes
• Reuters
• Japan Times
• South China Morning Post
• CNA
• NPR
• The Diplomat
• The Straits Times

About the Oksenberg Conference

Sponsored by Shorenstein APARC and led by the China Program, the annual Oksenberg Conference honors the legacy of the late Professor Michel Oksenberg. A renowned China scholar who urged the United States to engage with Asia in a more considered manner, Oksenberg was a senior fellow at APARC and FSI and served as a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China. In his tribute, the Oksenberg Conference recognizes distinguished individuals who have advanced the understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.