Michael Sobolik wants us to be very afraid of Chinese expansionism:
For all of Beijing’s legitimate and long-standing security concerns, however, the sheer scope of China’s expansion is undeniable. Western leaders often deny or ignore it, usually at the behest and prodding of Chinese leaders. When Nixon finally gained an audience with Mao Zedong, he reassured the chairman, “We know China doesn’t threaten the territory of the United States.” Mao quickly corrected him: “Neither do we threaten Japan or South Korea.” To which Nixon added, “Nor any country.” Within the decade, Beijing invaded Vietnam.
Sobolik’s argument relies on a lot of unsupported assertions and distortions. This anecdote about Nixon and Mao is a good example of the latter. The Sino-Vietnamese War was a punitive campaign that China launched in response to Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. It was hardly a war of expansionist conquest, and it didn’t result in any territorial gains for China. In fact, the war didn’t go well for China at all, and that was the last time that the PRC waged a major war outside its borders. It has been generations since Chinese forces have engaged in anything more than border skirmishes. Whatever else one wants to say about Chinese foreign policy, calling it expansionist is simply inaccurate.
It is true that previous Chinese dynasties have expanded their territory through conquest. It’s also true that this Chinese expansionism was a product of an earlier period and has little or nothing to do with how China operates in the world today. Sobolik refers to “the Middle Kingdom’s penchant for imperialism,” but there is almost no evidence that this is a major factor in Chinese decision-making now.
Sobolik asserts that “Beijing is approaching the world not to embrace it, but to rule it.” This is a common assumption among China hawks, but once again there is remarkably little evidence to support it. China has some well-known territorial ambitions in its immediate vicinity, and its government wants to be the preeminent power in East Asia, but it is a huge leap to go from that to assuming that their leaders have designs on global hegemony. This is a story that China hawks need to tell about China to make them into a suitable adversary for the “new cold war” that they think the U.S. is losing.
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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.