China, US Joust

choi

Robert S Ross, Chinese Nationalism and Its Discontents. National Interest, Nov-Dec, 2011.
http://nationalinterest.org/arti ... ts-discontents-6038

Quote:

"The source of all this strident Chinese diplomacy is not its emergence as a regional great power with corresponding confidence in its new capabilities. Rather, China’s new diplomacy reflects the regime’s spiraling domestic confidence and its increasing dependence on nationalism for domestic stability.

"THE TRUTH is China is neither particularly militarily strong nor particularly domestically stable. Beijing’s combative diplomacy was not spurred by American economic weakness in the wake of the recession, and it was far from an indicator of growing Chinese confidence. On the contrary, in recent years Beijing has not deployed and operationalized significant new advanced naval capabilities, and its domestic economic environment is worse today than at any time since the onset of the post-Mao economic reforms in 1978.

"Despite the stimulus, unemployment in China remains high in rural areas and among urban college graduates. In 2010, Premier Wen Jiabao estimated that there were 200 million unemployed Chinese.

"Economic instability and the erosion of the Communist Party’s control over society are occurring simultaneously. This domestic weakness has forced the government to rely more and more on nationalism for regime legitimacy—and it explains Beijing’s diplomatic blundering.

"Following the North Korean sinking of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan in March 2010 and China’s failure to publicly condemn Pyongyang for the attack, the United States developed a series of effective initiatives in maritime East Asia designed to reaffirm its resolve to contend with the rise of China. * * * During the George W. Bush administration, the United States reduced its troops in South Korea by 40 percent, removed its forces deployed between the demilitarized zone and Seoul, dramatically reduced the size of the annual U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises and stated in the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review that in 2012 the United States would transfer to Seoul operational command (OPCOM) of South Korean forces. These steps, regardless of the administration’s intentions, created a China that was more secure on its periphery. Now, the Obama administration has reversed course.

"The administration’s forward-deployed diplomacy also includes strategic cooperation with Vietnam. For over twenty years Washington parried Vietnamese overtures, understanding that Indochina is not a vital interest. Yet * * *


My comment:
(a) Immediately following quotation 2 is the following:

"Beyond its coastal waters, China’s naval capability remains dependent on its advanced diesel submarines, which were first deployed in the mid-1990s. By 2000, China’s submarine force had already begun to pose a formidable challenge to U.S. naval operations in the western Pacific Ocean. But since then it has not deployed any additional naval capabilities that pose consequential new challenges to the U.S. Navy or to America’s defense of its security partners.

This statement hints at
Kilo class submarine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo_class_submarine
(China has "2 Original Kilo, 10 Improved Kilo" which were commissioned 1994-2005)

(b) volte-face (n; French, from Italian voltafaccia, from voltare to turn + faccia face, from Vulgar Latin *facia; First Known Use: 1819):
"a reversal in policy : ABOUT-FACE"
www.m-w.com
(c) Again, Taiwan is conspicuously absent in this analysis, maybe because--at least judging from the flow of the analysis--Taiwan is not part of flash points during the Ma administration.