China’s rise: Hard-power or soft-power?

[Dawood Ibrahim]

By Webmaster -
December 19, 2016
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Ali jibran

The uncertainty regarding China’s near future is a hot debate in contemporary global politics academic circles. In this article, I will endeavour to discuss the near future of China after looking briefly at China rise from these antipodal views. Paul Kennedy in his master work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, suggests that military and political power of states rest on their economic power. The economic prowess of a country ultimately leads her to seek her interests militarily to secure her relative position in anarchic international political system.
The behaviour of three major powers in 19th century-the UK, Germany and Japan- and the US in 20th century verifies this theory. Based on this theory of Paul Kennedy, John J. Meirsheimer predicts that China- which is the second largest economy currently and will replace the US as the largest economy in 2027 according to a report of Goldman Sachs- bound to behave in the similar fashion to these aggressive powers of near past because disposition to aggression is not intrinsic to states, but is instead the product of the constant search for survival in a world of uncertainty, changing distribution of power and offensive military capabilities. Therefore, once economic superiority of China is well established, it will ascertain it that no other country should challenge that status-quo.
On the other hand, Joseph N. Nye presents concept of soft-power in his book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, as an alternative to hard power. He opines that in contemporary politics, use of hard power may ruin the overall image of the countries using it. The main assumption of soft power is that the poor countries endeavour to emulate the developed countries; therefore soft power can be used to get the desired results from poor countries without use of coercion. China can use its soft-power in form of extensive scholarship programs, hundreds of Confucius Institutes established around the world, growing number of international blockbuster movies, a number of great international airports, the Beijing-Lhasa railway, an excellent network of expressways, the Pudong airport-Shanghai Meglev rail link, the three Gorges Dam, world’s largest high-speed rail network and the Bird’s Nest Stadium. China will be soon in a better position to use soft-power because of its extensive economic relations to different parts of worlds, especially with Africa, East Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.
After looking the both contradictory views, it becomes evident that it is highly complicated to predict China’s future behaviour, but the current economic and political parameters may provide some help. China is still dependent on the imported military hardware from Europe and Russia, thus China is of no mach to the much developed and improved forces of the US that have more than 800 bases throughout the world. Owing to week relative military position, China does not seem to behave like Japan or Germany of past. Moreover, China is poorly endowed in natural resources, making it massively dependent on raw material and energy from Africa, Latin America and Middle East.
Any military conflict in future can disrupt the over-sea traffic of Chinese goods by the powerful US forces in South China Sea, culminating in deleterious effects for Chinese import-export oriented economy, though China is strenuously looking for some other routs like CPEC and Iranian land based supply route from West to East Asia to decrease its dependence on South China Sea. Therefore, the economy of China is much more integrated with international world than Germany or Japan in past. The future Chinese policy still seems to be unchanged and will echo in future in golden words by charismatic Chinese leader Deng Xioping at the turn of twentieth century, “hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership”.
— The writer is PhD Researcher in IR at International Islamic University Islamabad.
Email:ali.jibran33@gmail.com


http://pakobserver.net/chinas-rise-hard-power-or-soft-power/

 

[tranquilium]

One, China is not an import-export economy. It does a lot of import and export, but its GDP percentage is about average and lower than many other major economies.

Two, soft power comes from hard power, not the other way around. Also, soft power comes NATURALLY with hard power. USSR policy is as aggressive as it goes, but it has plenty of soft power in its height. It is when its hard power declines that the nation begin to lose soft power. The same case applies to British empire and US. Post WWII Germany and Japan are prime example why economic power means squat if you don't have the military power to defend it.

Three, the argument is basically hinged on the assumption that China is no match with US' military. This completes ignores the fact that power projection in certain region and total power is two different things entirely. This is also discounting the fact military import-export (yes, China is also a very large military exporter) are also political in nature.

Four, China's situation is also vastly different from pre-WWI Japan and Germany. The military expansion of old Japan and Germany is a necessity because they require infusion of external resource to complete their industrial base (which, btw, failed eventually and left Japan and Germany in its state today and played no small part in their economic decline) Chinese completed the industrial base decades ago.

Five, China is one of the most resource rich nation in the world. (Duh, it is enormous and the large territory comes with large resource reserves) Its importation of resource comes from the fact that resource are way cheaper than industrial productions and trading your finished product for resource has always been the more lucrative side of the business. Here is a hint, raw resource exporters are typically the nations that lacks the industrial infrastructure to take full advantage of their resource, not the other way around.

Six, let's get this point straight. What is the fundamental advantage of socialism that attracted so many nations? Socialism is born in the fire and blood of the 19th and 20th century. While it offers a number of advantages, the very base and very fundamental characteristic that sold it to so many nations is that it is just really good at waging total wars. Even the "capitalist" nations today adopts many practices from socialism and in time of war, the social policies tends to shift rapidly towards socialist characteristics. The idea that a socialist nation is incapable or afraid of war is rather ignorant.

In conclusion, I found the article to be rather under-researched. It shows unfamiliarity with Eastern politic, history and other background information.

I also want to add a bit guess work on why the articles turns out that way:

A few days I was discussing the effect of culture revolution in China's development on another forum. There is a peculiarity I have noticed. In many post-culture revolution articles, it is claimed culture revolution is a time of great chaos. Society shutting, economy collapsed, etc etc, but the problem is, these claims doesn't match the actual number.

During the period between 1966 to 1976, the Chinese government invest roughly 30 billion RMB into industrial development, using the current conversion and taking into account of inflation, it is equivalent to a modern day government investing 800+ billion USD into the nation's industrial development. The resultant industrial output across all sectors also shows that the investment paid off. The Chinese GDP doubled during the culture revolution and all the other indicators, such as life-expectancy, number of companies, variety of products, volume of product all increased drastically during this time period. In fact, it is during this time period where the Chinese industrial full matures and formed a complete chain of supply and demand. Basically, before culture revolution, Chinese industrial would still rely on other countries for certain parts and products, and after culture revolution, pretty much everything can be found in China.

So from all the data, this means culture revolution is actually an unprecedented period of Chinese industrial growth. However, the political chaos and various political movement during the time period is also true. From historical observation, these should be the events that hinders development. So what exactly happened? Did someone lie? No, the data correlates too well and it is consistent with later data as well.

Then someone commented on the nature of the "right wing" group and I realized something, the fundamental reason for culture revolution is:

"Which development direction should China take"

Every leader of that generation comes from the time of world wars. They are first witness to what happens to the nations and people that can't defend themselves. So for them, it is paramount to find a path where China can develop best.

So what sort of situation did they found they need to navigate through? Well, they are in the smack middle of a cold war. Sandwiched between two superpowers that have significantly more powerful military. Economically, China was hanging between 6 to 10th largest economy in the world, but only a fraction of size of the top ones. There is no ending in sight, you have very little cards in your hand and plenty of hostile enemies.

As the result, the Chinese leadership is divided on what direction should China takes. Mao and his supporters, for example, argued that China needs to industrialize at all cost. All resources, all available labor should be devoted into completing the industrial base, military complex. Deng and his supporters argued that light industrial is the way to go. He proposed that the industrial base can be completed latter, light industrial is a much more efficient in investment/return and the accumulated capital can be used later to finish the industrial base. There are also other groups that proposed their theory and interpretation on which way China should go. And this division is the the fundamental cause of the political struggle in culture revolution.

From today's perspective, who is right? Well, the answer is rather complicated. Deng is correct in predicting that the international condition is not quite as urgent. (The fact is, nobody predicted the collapse of USSR and at the time of collapse US is also heavily exhausted from cold war, so if USSR haven't collapse, it is very likely that both nations will still be locked in a battle of attrition and giving other nations a chance to develop. Also, the cold war never turned hot.) However, the entrance into international market in the 80s showed that Mao's complete industrial base is such an overwhelming advantage in international competition that China owes much of its present day prosperity to it. So it is fair to say that while the leaders in China didn't get everything right during culture revolution, they did enough and built enough foundation for their successors.

So how is this discussion relevant to the articles? Well, like China in culture revolution, many nations today are also looking for their path in the world. The gradual decline of US and rise of China is shifting world into a multiple-poled stages and people are looking for ways their nations can grow. China's success did inspire a lot of nations, but the problem is, China's success also require a lot of impossible-to-replicate things. For example, China's peace from 1949 onward is ensured by the fact that it took on alliance of 16 nations and including some of the most powerful nations on the earth. The war lasted 3 years, so it is not a short term fluke. The war is also on foreign soil, meaning China is very capable of hitting back. The casualty ratio is 1.3 to 1 meaning is not sacrificing lives for victory, but two equal military powers fighting it out. By the end of the Korean wars, other nations knew that military invasion of China is not possible. The middle eastern nations, on the other hand, are not in a position to repeat such a feat. The Chinese route is being self-empowered, self-reliant and persevere though everything using one's raw strength. It is a very beautiful and romantic route, but it is certainly not a direction everyone can take. The proposed soft power approach is useful for middle eastern nations and indeed many other small-medium nations of the world, but applying that to China is a mistake.

 

[Beast]

China is more likely a military export oriented countries rather than import. The article probably uses data 10years ago to gauge. For example, Pakistan armed forces basically from land, navy and air forces equipped with mostly made in China products or ToT. It clearly shows China is able to export a full set of weapons tailor for a countries need. And China is slowly about to use this export advantage to win allies like Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan and Zambia, Iraq for their military need.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Imperial China HAD plenty of soft power, right before the start of the Century of Humiliation. Look at how much cultural influence Ancient China exerted on Imperial Japan for instance. Yet guess what happened?

I guess we learned our lesson. It's hard power that matters the most. Soft power with no hard power to back it up is meaningless.

 

[royalharris]

We are still a developing country, let the supe power be supe power

 

[Place Of Space]

Hard power is easy to be understood, soft power is like something emptiness.
I prefer obvious hard power and visible soft power.