{"id":47334,"date":"2024-04-28T16:32:23","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T00:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=47334"},"modified":"2024-04-28T16:32:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T00:32:23","slug":"hawks-inflate-the-threat-from-chinese-expansionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/28\/hawks-inflate-the-threat-from-chinese-expansionism\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks Inflate the Threat from Chinese ‘Expansionism’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Sobolik wants us<\/a> to be very afraid of Chinese expansionism:<\/p>\n

For all of Beijing\u2019s legitimate and long-standing security concerns, however, the sheer scope of China\u2019s 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, \u201cWe know China doesn\u2019t threaten the territory of the United States.\u201d Mao quickly corrected him: \u201cNeither do we threaten Japan or South Korea.\u201d To which Nixon added, \u201cNor any country.\u201d Within the decade, Beijing invaded Vietnam.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sobolik\u2019s 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<\/a> was a punitive campaign that China launched in response to Vietnam\u2019s intervention in Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. It was hardly a war of expansionist conquest, and it didn\u2019t result in any territorial gains for China. In fact, the war didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is true that previous Chinese dynasties have expanded their territory through conquest. It\u2019s 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 \u201cthe Middle Kingdom\u2019s penchant for imperialism,\u201d but there is almost no evidence that this is a major factor in Chinese decision-making now.<\/p>\n

Sobolik asserts that \u201cBeijing is approaching the world not to embrace it, but to rule it.\u201d 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 \u201cnew cold war\u201d that they think the U.S. is losing.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Sobolik wants us to be very afraid of Chinese expansionism: For all of Beijing\u2019s legitimate and long-standing security concerns, however, the sheer scope of China\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-47334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Whatever else one wants to say about Chinese foreign policy, calling it expansionist is simply inaccurate."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47334"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47339,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47334\/revisions\/47339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47334"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=47334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}