Korea Herald: Do you think China is attempting to challenge the existing order and build a new order favorable to its own interests?

Choo Jae-woo: I think we should look at the economic and noneconomic domains separately. In terms of the economic order, it would be difficult for China to tear down the existing institutions and order, and create new ones. If you look at the governance structure of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, it is the same as those of the Asia Development Bank and other existing bodies, meaning that China might have found it difficult to create a new financial order. If you also look at the international trade order, the WTO (World Trade Organization) system has been so deeply and firmly entrenched that it can hardly be supplanted by a new one.

The noneconomic front is about security and the military. I think China, based on my long-term forecast, is likely to challenge or alter the existing security order. Speaking of China’s security, we need to fully grasp the perspectives of a continental state. Although China now calls itself a maritime power, it has traditionally been a continental power. For a continental power, the security order and environment in its neighborhood is of great importance. For it to rise stably, its peripheral areas should be stable.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has talked of the Chinese dream and that means China regaining its past glory, in other words, the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” That sounds very comprehensive, but that is exactly about the order China envisions. China wants to revive the past regional order. What China talked about right after the Korean War (1950-53), was that “foreign elements” should not remain in its surrounding area. In the past, the foreign elements referred to Japan, but now it is the U.S. China has long sought to pursue stability in the regional security landscape, and to achieve that, the priority has been placed on eliminating the foreign elements.

The U.S. has maintained its presence in the region through its alliance network, which of course involves Japan and South Korea. China has wanted to drive out U.S. forces from the region in line with its efforts to remove foreign elements. China has long perceived America’s alliance network negatively, thinking that the alliances are a key destabilizing factor in the region.

In a nutshell, China envisions a 21st-century East Asian security order that excludes the “foreign elements” and can be led by China. In the economic realm, it would take a considerable amount of time for it to change the existing order and do anything to that effect, although shifts could emerge if the yuan is fully internationalized. 


KH: What would be the external policy principles for China in the process of seeking a stable security environment?

Choo: There is something China has constantly talked about with regard to the regional security environment since it founded its nation, the People’s Republic of China, in 1949. I believe that is still valid up until now. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai underscored that a “zone of peace” should be built in its neighborhood and states surrounding it should be neutralized. This is why China actively participated in the Bandung Conference (in 1955), and that is how the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” were formulated at the conference.

The five principles are mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual nonaggression; mutual noninterference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and cooperation for mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence.

China as a continental power thought that a foreign element would become a destabilizing factor should it enter its zone of peace or a group of neutralized states in its neighborhood. That is why Mao Zedong once said, “Asian issues should be dealt with by Asians themselves.” Last year, China called for a new Asia security concept in the CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia), and this concept is actually in line with what Mao said. Having said this, a series of China’s ongoing projects such as the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the AIIB and Shanghai Cooperation Organization have apparently been pushed for to reflect China’s such security vision and objectives.

KH: Is the goal of building a peace zone really valid now after it emerged in the 1950s?

Choo: Yes, it is. Both China and the U.S. have continued to reflect their initial security visions, which were mapped out in the 1950s, still in their current respective strategies. 

As for China, it could not actively push for its security vision decades ago because China could not exert its leadership to realize the vision (as its national power wasn’t strong enough back then). So its vision remained merely rhetorical and declaratory. But now, it is pushing for it with practical actions and leadership, as was witnessed in its calls for the establishment of a regional security architecture -- part of a move to build the peace zone.

The U.S. also began pushing for its security vision in the 1950s. It sought to build a “hub-and-spoke” bilateral alliance system to build an Asian version of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). For this to materialize, the U.S. needed to build an intra-alliance system by connecting the allies with one another. But this has not worked out well. The U.S. has pushed its allies to get together, but its allies have not moved as the U.S. has wished. Even Japan wasn’t helpful as it was fettered by the pacifist constitution, one that the U.S. itself imposed. Thus, the hub-and-spoke system, or the bilateral alliance system has persisted over the last six decades. But now, Japan is moving to jettison the constitution as the U.S. has encouraged Japan to do so behind the scenes -- of course, not too obviously. 


KH: The U.S. and China seem to be envisioning a different type of regional security architecture or order. What is your take on this?

Choo: I think we should look at what kind of regionalism they are advocating. China favors one that is characterized by openness and inclusiveness, while the U.S. is pursuing a regionalism strictly based upon institutionalism and the rule of law. What China pursues is thus one that is rather loose and not legally binding. Also, the decisions are made through consensus, and there are no serious penalties when violations occur. Its membership is also inclusive and comprehensive. Here, inclusiveness only applies to Asians, as China seeks to eliminate “foreign elements.” This is sort of an “Asian way.”

The U.S. has a diametrically different approach. Its regionalism should be strictly a rule-based one. What matters more is that the regional architecture should consist of states that share the same values such as freedom and human rights. The decision-making process is also strict and penalties are meted out when anybody contravenes rules. As the U.S. envisions a regional architecture involving its allies, their commitments would remain strong, while in the Chinese approach, participants’ commitments are somewhat weak. 

KH: What do you think each wants to achieve through the architecture that it has pursued?

Choo: Let me talk about the U.S. first. Though many may disagree with me, I think that the U.S. wants to contain China. If the U.S. just tries to “manage” its relations with China rather than containing it, China would become too big to handle. Thus, the U.S. appears to be seeking to contain China first, then manage the relations, and engage with China. While containing China, the U.S. appears to be seeking to turn the current hub-and-spoke structure into an intra-alliance system, and ultimately create a collective security architecture here based on the commitments from its allies.

As for China, it is pursuing a multilateral architecture that meshes with Asian cultural trais. Asians hate being constrained or fettered by anything or being led to behave based on strict rules or legal procedures. That is not in our Asian culture, which is characterized by a sort of flexibility and pliability. 

KH: China has focused on the so-called peripheral diplomacy or neighborhood diplomacy. It even mentioned its vision to build a “community sharing the common destiny.” What would be China’s intentions?

Choo: I believe the idea of establishing the community is in sync with China’s pursuit of a peace zone and neutralism under the five principles of peaceful coexistence (adopted in the 1955 Bandung Conference). The five principles have served as the crucial ideological foundation that undergirded China’s vision for the regional order. 

In addition to the principles, there are three additional ones China has put forward. China says the world is a diverse, pluralistic society in terms of the development status, cultures and political systems. So, China stresses that diversity and pluralism should be respected. Another thing is that China says core interests should be respected. And the other is that the world should seek common interests to foster codevelopment and coprosperity with an aim to build a community of the shared destiny. These new additions came as China seeks to reflect changes in the 21st century, including the new post-Cold War international structure. 

Back to China’s intentions behind its pursuit of the community, this is exactly about the security perspective of a continental state, which would prioritize stabilizing its neighborhood before expanding its sphere of influence beyond the region. The Confucian axiom actually well depicts China’s intentions and that is “Cultivate your morals, then manage the family and then rule a nation and the world.”

KH: How do you think China would handle territorial disputes in the South China Sea?

Choo: If you look at media reports on the South China Sea disputes, they mostly talk of China’s territorial ambitions, their challenge to the sea lines of communication or what the U.S. calls “freedom of navigation,” or rich energy resources in the disputed sea. But they are all superficial stories and they don’t really delve deeper into the fundamental motives behind China’s push to secure the sea. 

To put it simply, China has some traumatic experiences regarding the South China Sea, as foreign elements persistently intervened to control the sea in the past, and called for the right to the freedom of navigation. Since the Opium War (1840-42), foreign elements including the U.S. have demanded the right as they moved into China’s territory, and this history has been repeated from China’s perspective. After the 1950-53 Korean War, the U.S. also set up a maritime blockade and maintained it for some two decades when China was in the state reconstruction process, which required the use of sea routes for a stable supply of energy and raw materials. 

So China was once a victim. For the Chinese, the traumatic memories about the foreign elements intervening in its waters still remain potent. The foreign elements with the right to freedom of navigation committed crimes or got involved in accidents with impunity, as they exercised their extraterritoriality. So, China has such a historical background that has made it highly sensitive to the ongoing maritime disputes.

KH: What do you think about Japan’s role as a variable in the process of China pushing for a regional structure that it favors?

Choo: China and Japan know each other very well, meaning they both are well cognizant of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It is like they are looking at each other entirely naked. What is interesting is that China seems to have some sort of inferiority complex vis-a-vis Japan, and vice versa. 

Although China upheld the nonalignment policy, it officially had alliance treaties three times -- interestingly all with Russia (and its precursors). Two of the treaties were aimed at keeping Japan in check. Japan has also some kind of inferiority complex over China due to historical experiences including the suzerain-tributary relationship during the Sino-centric order and Japan’s perception that it was defeated by China’s anti-Japanese campaign, etc. 

What is also interesting is that it was Japanese scholars who first initiated the talk of the “China threat” in the early 1990s, and that it was also the Chinese who started the discourse about the “Japan threat” in the 1970s. Chinese warned then that Japan would rise militarily based on its growing economic clout. Two decades later, Japan fueled the discourse against China with the same logic that China used to corroborate its claim about the Japan threat.

This shows that the two know each other too well, and recognize each other as security threats. So, I think the two sides might set some threshold that they would not want to cross. They can’t cross it as they know what it means to cross it and what would happen should it be crossed. History showed that when the two were caught in an armed conflict, one of them was annihilated. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894-94), China saw its downfall, while Japan suffered huge damages after China’s anti-Japanese campaign from 1937. Thus, they would try to keep the line, but their conflicts would persist due to their long-running rivalry.

Song Sang-ho(sshluck@heraldcorp.com)

*Choo Jae-woo

Choo Jae-woo, professor of Chinese foreign policy in the Department of Chinese Studies at Kyung Hee University, specializes in Chinese foreign policy, multilateral security cooperation and China-North Korea relations.

He served as a visiting fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings Institution and a visiting professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he taught inter-Korean relations and North Korean politics and foreign policy. 

Prior to his teaching at Kyung Hee, he worked as a researcher at a number of think tanks in Korea, including the National Security Policy Institute and Institute for International Trade at Korea International Trade Association. He was also a regular contributor to Asia Times Online on Korean affairs from 2002 to 2005.

He obtained his bachelor’s degree in government from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and master’s and doctorate degrees in international relations from Peking University.