The
Geography
Chinese
of
Power
How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?
RobertD. Kaplan
The English geographerSirHalfordMackinder endedhis famous
1904 article,"The Geographical Pivot ofHistory,"with a disturbing
reference toChina. After explaining why Eurasia was
the geostrategic
fulcrumofworld power,he posited that theChinese, should they
expand their power well beyond their borders, "might constitute the
yellow peril to theworld s freedomjust because theywould add an
oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent, an advantage
as yet denied to theRussian tenant of the
pivot region." Leaving aside
the sentiment's racism, which was common for the era, as well as the
a
hysterics sparked by the rise of non-Western power at any time,
Mackinder
had a point: whereas Russia, that other Eurasian giant,
a
an oceanic front blocked
basically was, and is still, land power with
a
to
9,000-mile temperate coastline with many
by ice, China, owing
is
both a land power and a sea power.
good natural harbors,
(MackinderactuallyfearedthatChina might one day conquerRussia.)
svirtual reach extends fromCentral Asia, with all itsmineral and
to themain
shipping lanes of the Pacific Ocean.
hydrocarbon wealth,
China
Robert
D.
Kaplan
is a Senior Fellow at theCenter for aNew American
a
His book Monsoon: The
Security and
correspondent for The Atlantic.
Indian Ocean and theFuture ofAmerican Power will be published in the fall.
For an annotated guide to this topic, see "What to Read on Geopolitics" at
www.foreignaffairs.com/ readinglists/geopolitics.
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The GeographyofChinesePower
Later, inDemocratic Ideals and Reality, Mackinder
predicted that along
with theUnited States and theUnited Kingdom,China would even
tuallyguide theworld by "buildingfora quarterof humanitya new
civilization, neither quite Eastern nor quiteWestern."
Chinas blessed geographyis so obvious a point that ittendstoget
of the country's economic dynamism and
national assertiveness. Yet it is essential: itmeans thatChina will stand
overlooked
in discussions
at thehub ofgeopoliticseven ifthecountry's
path towardglobalpower
is not necessarily linear. (China has routinely had gdp growth rates of
over the past 30 years, but
more than ten percent
annually
they almost
an
Western
extreme,
certainly cannot last another 30.) China combines
style
modernitywith a "hydrauliccivilization"(a termcoined by the
to describe societies that exercise centralized
historian KarlWittfogel
control over irrigation) that is reminiscent of the ancient Orient:
thanks to central control, the regime can, for example, enlist the
labor of millions to build major infrastructure.This makes China re
lentlessly dynamic inways that democracies, with all of their tempo
cannot be. As China's nominally Communist
rulers?the
rizing,
scions of some 25 dynasties going back 4,000 years?are
absorbing
are
and
Western
Western
technology
practices, they
integrating them
into a disciplined and elaborate cultural system with a unique expe
rience in, among other things, forming tributary relationships with
other states. "The Chinese," a Singaporean official told me early this
year, "charm you when they want to charm you, and squeeze you
when theywant to squeeze you, and they do it quite systematically."
Chinas internal dynamism creates external ambitions. Empires rarely
come about
states become stronger,
by design; theygrow organically. As
new needs and?this may seem counterintuitive?
they cultivate
to
expand invarious forms. Even under
apprehensions that force them
the stewardship of some of themost forgettable presidents?Rutherford
Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Benjamin Harrison?the
United States' economy grew steadily and quietly in the late nineteenth
century.As the country traded more with the outside world, itdevel
oped complex economic and strategic interests in far-flung places.
Sometimes, as in South America and the Pacific region, for example,
these interests justifiedmilitary action. The United States was also able
to start
focusing outward during that period because ithad consolidated
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Robert D. Kaplan
the interior of the continent; the lastmajor battle of the IndianWars
was
fought in 1890.
China today is consolidating its land borders and beginning to
turn outward. Chinas
are as
as
foreign policy ambitions
aggressive
a
those of theUnited States
century ago, but for completely different
reasons. China does not take a
missionary approach toworld affairs,
an
or a system of government. Moral
to
seeking
spread
ideology
progress in international affairs is an American goal, not a Chinese
one; Chinas actions abroad are propelled by itsneed to secure energy,
metals, and strategic minerals in order to support the rising living
standards of its immense population, which amounts to about one-fifth
of theworlds
total.
To
this task, China has built advantageous
power
accomplish
in
both
territories
in
and
contiguous
relationships
far-flung locales
rich in the resources it requires to fuel its growth. Because what
drives China abroad has to do with a core national interest?economic
can be defined as an uber-realist power. It seeks to
survival?China
a
are
sturdy presence throughout the parts of Africa that
develop
well endowed with oil and minerals and wants to secure port access
throughout the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, which connect
the hydrocarbon-rich Arab-Persian world to the Chinese
seaboard.
Having no choice in thematter,Beijing cares littleabout the typeof
regime with which it is engaged; it requires stability, not virtue as the
some of these
conceives of it.And because
West
regimes?such
as those in Iran,
(also known as Burma), and Sudan?are
Myanmar
resources
benighted and authoritarian, Chinas worldwide scouring for
as
brings it into conflict with themissionary-oriented United States,
well as with countries such as India and Russia, against whose own
China isbumpingup.
spheresof influence
To be sure,China is not an existential problem for these states.The
chance of a war between China and the United States is remote;
The
theChinese militarythreatto theUnited States isonly indirect.
challenge China poses is primarily geographic?notwithstanding
critical issues about debt, trade, and global warming. China s emerging
a
area of influence inEurasia and Africa is
growing, not in nineteenth
century imperialistic sense but in a more subtle manner better suited
to the era of
globalization.
Simply by securing its economic needs,
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The GeographyofChinesePower
is shifting the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere,
and thatmust mightily concern theUnited States. On land and at sea,
abetted by Chinas favorable location on themap, Beijing's influence
is emanating and expanding from Central Asia to the South China
Sea, from the Russian Far East to the Indian Ocean. China is a rising
continental power, and, asNapoleon famously said, the policies of such
states are inherent in their
geography.
China
irritable
border
syndrome
areas within the Chinese
and Tibet are the two
Xinjiang
principal
statewhose inhabitants have resisted the
pull of Chinese civilization.
This makes them imperialpropertiesofBeijing, inaway. In addition,
tensions in these areas are complicating Beijing's
states.
relationships with adjacent
name of China's westernmost
means
province,
"Xinjiang," the
"new dominion," and it refers toChinese Turkestan, an area twice the
size of Texas that lies far from China's heartland, across the Gobi
Desert. China has been a state in some form for thousands of years,
ethnic nationalist
butXinjiang formallybecame part of it only in the late nineteenth
century. Since then, as the twentieth-century British diplomat
once put it, the
Sir Fitzroy Maclean
history of the province "has been
one of sustained turbulence,"
punctuated by revolts and various periods
of independent rule well into the 1940s. In 1949, Mao
Zedong's
Communists marched intoXinjiang and forcibly integrated the province
into the rest of China. But as recently as 1990 and again last year, ethnic
Turkic Uighurs?descendants
of the Turks who ruledMongolia
in
the seventh and eighth centuries?rioted
against Beijing's rule.
The Uighurs in China number about eight million and make up
less than one percent of China's population, but they account for
45 percent ofXinjiang's. China's majority Han population is heavily
concentrated in the lowlands in the center of the country and by the
Pacific, whereas the drier plateaus in the country's west and southwest
are the historical homes of the
Uighur and Tibetan minorities. This
distribution is a continuing source of tension, because in
Beijing's
eyes, the modern Chinese state should exert total control over these
tablelands. In order to secure these areas?and
the oil, natural gas,
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Robert D. Kaplan
copper, and
iron ore in their soil?Beijing
has for decades been
them with Han Chinese from the country's heartland. It
populating
has also been aggressively courting the independent
ethnic Turkic
republicsofCentralAsia, partlyto deprive theUighurs ofXinjiang
of any possible rear base.
to
Beijing has also been courting Central Asian governments in order
expand its sphere of influence; China already stretches far intoEurasia,
but not far enough given its demand for natural resources. Beijing's
sway inCentral Asia takes the form of two soon-to-be-completed major
one to carry oil from the
to
Sea across
Xinjiang:
pipelines
Caspian
the other to carry natural gas from Turkmenistan
Kazakhstan,
across Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. China's
resources
hunger for natural
also means that Beijing will take substantial risks to secure them. It
ismining for copper south of Kabul, inwar-torn Afghanistan, and
has its eye on the region's iron, gold, uranium, and precious gems (the
regionhas someof theworld's lastuntapped deposits).Beijing hopes
tobuild roadsand energypipelines through
Afghanistan andPakistan
aswell, linkingup itsbuddingCentral Asian dominion to ports on
the Indian Ocean.
China's
strategic geography would
be enhanced
iftheUnited States stabilizedAfghanistan.
Like Xinjiang, Tibet is essential toChina's territorial self-conception,
and likeXinjiang, itaffectsChina's external relations.The mountainous
rich in copper and iron ore, accounts formuch of
China's territory.This iswhy Beijing views with horror the prospect
ofTibetan autonomy, let alone independence, and why it is frantically
across the area.Without Tibet, China
building roads and railroads
India would add a northern zone to its
would be but a rump?and
Tibetan
Plateau,
subcontinental power base.
its one-billion-plus
With
India already is a blunt
population,
in China's zone of influence inAsia. A map of
geographic wedge
"Greater China" inZbigniew Brzezinski's 1997 book The Grand Chess
boardmakes this point vividly. To some degree, China and India are
indeeddestinedby geographyto be rivals:neighborswith immense
over
populations, rich and venerable cultures, and competing claims
territory (for example, the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh). The
issue ofTibet only exacerbates these problems. India has been hosting
the Dalai Lama's government in exile since 1957, and according to
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m/^
zone
^000^^Approximate
Chinese
of
influence
Chinese
Countries thatwill resist
influence
Daniel Twining, a senior fellow at theGerman Marshall Fund, recent
border tensions "may be related toworries inBeijing
Chinese-Indian
over theDalai Lamas
succession': the next Dalai Lama might come
from theTibetan cultural belt that stretches across northern India,
even more
pro-Indian
Nepal, and Bhutan, presumably making him
and anti-Chinese. China and India will play a "great game" not only
in those areas but also inBangladesh and Sri Lanka. Xinjiang and
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Robert D. Kaplan
Tibet fallwithin China's legal borders, but the Chinese government's
as
tense relations with the
peoples of both provinces suggest that
Beijing expands its influencebeyond itsethnicHan core, it isbound
to encounter
resistance.
creeping
control
Chinas borders are secure, the country's very shape
ifparts
makes it appear as though it is dangerously incomplete?as
of an original Greater China had been removed. Chinas northern
was
a
border wraps around Mongolia,
giant territory that looks like it
once bitten out of Chinas back.
has one of theworld s lowest
Mongolia
Even
where
population densitiesand isnow being threateneddemographicallyby
once
civilization next door. Having
conquered
more
access to
to
cultivable
Outer Mongolia
land,
gain
Beijing is
a
to satisfy its
to conquer
again, after fashion, in order
Mongolia
poised
hunger for the country's oil, coal, uranium, and rich, empty grass
lands. Chinese mining companies have been seeking large stakes
an urban Chinese
assets because unchecked industrialization
inMongolia's
underground
and urbanization have turned China into theworld's leading consumer
of aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, tin, and iron ore; China's share of
theworld's metal consumption has jumped from ten percent to 25 per
cent since the late 1990s.With Tibet, Macao,
and Hong Kong already
under Beijing's control, China's dealings with Mongolia will be amodel
towhich China harbors imperialist intentions.
forjudging the degree
and of China's three northeastern provinces
ofMongolia
lies Russia's Far East region, a numbing vastness twice the size of
state
a meager and
shrinking population. The Russian
Europe with
area
during the nineteenth century and
expanded its reach into this
is
the early twentieth century,while China was weak. Now, China
as feeble
strong, and the Russian government's authority is nowhere
as it is in the eastern third of the country. Just across the border from
the roughly seven million Russians who live in the Russian Far
as low as 4.5 million
East?a
by 2015?in the
figure that could fall
three abutting Chinese provinces, live some 100 million Chinese:
the population density is 62 times as great on theChinese side as on the
Russian side. Chinese migrants have been filtering intoRussia, settling
North
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The GeographyofChinesePower
in large numbers
in the city of Chita,
north ofMongolia,
and else
where in the region.Resource acquisition is the principal goal of
Chinas foreignpolicy everywhere,and Russia's sparselypopulated
Far East has large reserves of natural gas, oil, timber, diamonds, and
of Chinese
settlersmoving
gold. "Moscow iswary of large numbers
into this region,bringing timber and mining companies in their
wake," David
wrote
Blair, a correspondent
for London's
last summer.
Daily
Telegraph,
As withMongolia, the fear isnot that theChinese armywill one
or
annex the Russian Far East. It is that
Beijing's
formally
day invade
over
control
the
and
corporate
region?parts
creeping demographic
ofwhich China held brieflyduring theQing dynasty?is steadily
increasing.During theCold War, border disputes between China
and theSovietUnion broughthundredsof thousandsof troopsto this
Siberian back of beyond and sometimes ignited into clashes. In the
late 1960s, these tensions led to the Sino-Soviet
split. Geography
could drive China and Russia apart, since their current alliance is
purely tactical.This could benefit theUnited States. In the 1970s,
the Nixon
administration
between Beijing
was
and Moscow
able to take advantage of the rift
to make an
opening toward China.
In thefuture,
with China thegreaterpower, theUnited Statesmight
conceivably
partner with Russia
against theMiddle Kingdom.
southern
China's
in a strategic alliance
to balance
promises
influence
is also spreading southeast. In fact, it iswith
the relatively weak states of Southeast Asia that the emergence of a
ismeeting the least resistance. There are relatively
Greater China
few geographic
from Vietnam,
impediments
separating China
a
and
The
natural
Laos, Thailand,
Myanmar.
capital of
sphere of
influence centering on theMekong
River and linking all the coun
triesof Indochina by road and river
would be Kunming, inChina's
Yunnan
The
Province.
largest country of mainland
Southeast Asia
isMyanmar.
If
Pakistan istheBalkans ofAsia, at riskofbeingdismembered,
Myanmar
is like
early-twentieth-century Belgium,
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being
by
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Robert D. Kaplan
the Russian Far East, and other
its great neighbors. Like Mongolia,
is a feeble state abun
territories on Chinas
land borders, Myanmar
dant in the natural resources thatChina desperately needs. China and
India are competing to develop the deep-water port of Sittwe, on
s Indian Ocean
seaboard, with both harboring the hope of
Myanmar
eventuallybuilding gas pipelines runningfromoffshorefields in the
Bay ofBengal.
As forthe regionas awhole, Beijing has in some respectsadopted
a
strategy. In the past, it negotiated with each
divide-and-conquer
of Southeast Asian Nations)
(the Association
country in asean
not with all of them as a unit. Even its newly
inaugurated
separately,
on a free-trade area with asean demonstrates how China
agreement
to
its southern
develop profitable relationships with
as a market for
uses asean
selling high-value Chinese
neighbors. It
manufactured
goods while buying from it low-value agricultural
to Chinese
trade surpluses, even as asean
produce. This has led
a
countries are becoming
dumping ground for industrial goods
continues
produced byChinas cheap urban labor.
is occurring as the once strong state ofThailand,
This
which has
been shakenby domesticpolitical problems lately,plays less and less
of a role as a regional anchor and inherent counterweight
to China.
with itsailing king, cannot be asmuch of a
The Thai royalfamily,
as it once was, and factionalism is roiling theThai
stabilizing force
a bilateral
military relationship with
military. (China is developing
Thailand, as well as building such relationships with other Southeast
Asian countries, even as theUnited States is focusing less on military
exercises in the region in order to concentrate on itswars inALfghanistan
and Singapore are
and Iraq.) To Thailand's
south, both Malaysia
as their
nation-building
heading into challenging democratic transitions
Kuan
and
Lee
Mohamad
Mahathir
bin
Yew,
strongmen,
respectively,
scene.
under
the
shadow of
is
further
from
the
coming
pass
Malaysia
China
economically,
even as its ethnic Chinese
population
feels
threatenedby themajorityMuslim Malays. And thegovernmentof
a state whose
is
even
population
though Singapore is
Singapore,
a vassal of China; for years
mostly ethnic Chinese, fears becoming
now, ithas nurtured amilitary training relationship with Taiwan. Lee
has publiclyurged theUnited States to stayengaged in the region,
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The GeographyofChinesePower
militarily and diplomatically. Indonesia, for its part, is caught between
to
hedge against China and
needing theUnited States' naval presence
fearingthat if it looks toomuch likeaU.S. ally itwill anger the rest
States' power in Southeast Asia
passes itsprime and China's rises, states in the region are increasingly
one another to
mitigate Beijing's divide-and
cooperating with
of the Islamic world. As
theUnited
and Singapore have banded
strategy. Indonesia, Malaysia,
more self-reliant these states
together against piracy, for example. The
can become, the less threatened
theywill be by China's rise.
conquer
in the
army
the Russian Far East, and Southeast
Central
Asia, Mongolia,
Asia are natural zones of Chinese
influence. But they are also zones
whose political borders are unlikely to change. The situation on the
Korean Peninsula isdifferent: themap ofChina isparticularly truncated
there, and there political borders could well shift.
regime is fundamentally unstable,
and its unraveling could affect the whole region. Jutting out from
the Korean Peninsula commands all maritime traffic to
Manchuria,
The
hermetic North
Korean
one
annex
really expects China to
any part of the Korean Peninsula, of course, yet China remains incon
venienced by the sovereignty of other states there, particularly in the
and from northeastern China. No
north.And although it supportsKim JongIl's Stalinistregime,ithas
plans forthepeninsulabeyondhis reign.Beijingwould like to even
tually send back the thousands of North Korean defectors who now
are inChina so that
a
they could build favorable political base forBei
jing's gradual economic takeover of the Tumen River region, where
China, North Korea, and Russia meet and which has good port facil
ities across from Japan on the Pacific Ocean.
This is one reason why Beijing would prefer to see a far more
a state
modern, authoritarian state develop inNorth Korea?such
would create a buffer between China and the vibrant, middle-class
on theKorean Peninsula
democracy of South Korea. But reunification
would also eventually benefit Beijing. A reunified Korea would be
nationalist and harbor some hostility toward China and
Japan, both
of which have sought to occupy it in the past. But Korea's
enmity
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[31]
Robert D.
Kaplan
toward Japan is significantly greater than its enmity toward China.
(Japanoccupied thepeninsulafrom1910to 1945,and Seoul andTokyo
continue
to argue over the status of the Tokdo/Takeshima
islets.)
_Economic
relations would be stronger with
China will project hard China thanwith Japan: a unified Korea
would be more or less under Seoul's con
power abroad primarily trol, and China
is South Koreas
already
biggest tradingpartner.Finally, a reunified
Korea that tilted slightly toward Beijing
through itsnavy.
and away from Japan would have little reason
to continue
hosting U.S. troops. In other words, it is easy to conceive
of a Korean futurewithin a Greater China and a time when the
States' ground presence inNortheast Asia will diminish.
As the example of theKorean Peninsula shows, China's land borders
beckon with more opportunities
than hazards. As Mackinder
seems to be
as a great land and sea
suggested, China
developing
power thatwill at the very least overshadow Russia in Eurasia. The
United
political scientistJohnMearsheimer wrote inThe Tragedy ofGreat
Power Politics that "the most dangerous states in the international
system are continental powers with large armies." This might be reason
to fearChina's influence as the country becomes more of a continental
power. But China only partially fitsMearsheimer's
description: its
army, 1.6million strong, is the largest in theworld, but itwill not have
an
to come. The
People's Liberation
expeditionary capability for years
to the
Army did respond
earthquake emergency in Sichuan in 2008,
to recent ethnic unrest inTibet and Xinjiang,
and to the security
challengeposed by the2008Olympics inBeijing.However, according
of the Center for a New American Security,
this shows only that the pla can move troops from one end of conti
nental China to another, not that it can yet move supplies and heavy
at the rate
required for military deployments. Perhaps
equipment
a
not much matter anyway, since the pla
gaining such capability does
is unlikely to cross China's borders other than by miscalculation
(if
toAbraham
Denmark
thereis anotherwar with India) or tofilla void (iftheNorth Korean
regime collapses). China
can fill power vacuums on its vast frontiers
and corporate means, without needing the
through demographic
an
expeditionary ground force.
backup of
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The Geography
ofChinesePower
China
diplomats,
s
on land is
to
partly thanks Chinese
unprecedented strength
who in recent years have busily settledmany border disputes
withCentralAsian republics,
Russia, and otherneighbors(India is the
cannot be overstated.
strikingexception). The significance of this change
There no longer is an army bearing down onManchuria;
during the
to concentrate
that ominous presence had forced Mao
Cold War,
Chinas defense budget on its army and neglect its navy.As theGreat
Wall
attests, China had been preoccupied with land invasions of one
sort or another since antiquity. No longer.
getting
sea
legs
this favorable situation on land, China is now free to
coastal city-states and island
work at building a great navy.Whereas
as
a
sea
matter
of course, doing so is a luxury
nations pursue
power
for historically insular continental powers such as China. In Chinas
case, this might be a luxury that is fairly easy to acquire since the
as
country is as blessed by its seaboard
by its continental interior.
Thanks
to
dominates the East Asian coastline in the temperate and
zones of the Pacific, and its southern border is close
enough
tropical
China
to the IndianOcean that itmight one daybe linkedto itby roadsand
China will projecthard
energypipelines. In the twenty-first
century,
power abroad primarily through its navy.
That said, it faces a farmore hostile environment at sea than itdoes
on land.The Chinese navy sees littlebut trouble inwhat itcalls the "first
island chain': theKorean Peninsula, theKuril Islands, Japan (including
theRyukyu Islands),Taiwan, thePhilippines, Indonesia, and Australia.
All except for Australia are potential flashpoints. China
is already
embroiled in various disputes over parts of the energy-rich ocean beds
of theEast China Sea and theSouthChina Sea: with Japanover the
Diaoyu/Senkaku
Islands and with the Philippines
and Vietnam
over
theSpratlyIslands.Such disputesallowBeijing to stokenationalismat
home, but for Chinese
naval strategists, this seascape
ismostly grim.
This firstislandchain is, in thewords JamesHolmes andToshi Yoshi
in reverse":
hara of theU.S. Naval War College, a kind of "GreatWall
a
line ofU.S. allies that serve as a sort of guard tower to
well-organized
monitor and possibly block Chinas access to the Pacific Ocean.
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Robert D.
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so boxed in has been
feeling
aggressive at times.
Naval power is usually more benign than land power: navies cannot by
themselves occupy vast areas and must do far more than fight?
commerce. Thus, one
to
namely, protect
might have expected China
be as benevolent as other maritime nations before it?Venice, Great
as those
to concern itself
Britain, the United States?and
primarily,
powers did, with preserving a peaceful maritime system, including the
freemovement of trade. But China is not so self-confident. Still an in
secure sea power, it thinks about the ocean
terms
territorially: the very
"first island chain" and "second island chain' (the second island chain
Chinas
includes
answer to
the U.S.
territories of Guam
and the Northern Mariana
Islands) suggestthattheChinese see all these islandsas archipelagic
landmass. In thinking in such a zero-sum
fashion about their country's adjoining seas, China's naval leaders are
extensions of the Chinese
displaying the aggressive philosophy of the turn-of-the-twentieth
centuryU.S. naval strategistAlfred Thayer Mahan, who argued for sea
control and the decisive battle. But they do not yet have the blue-water
force to apply it, and this discrepancy between aspirations and means
has led to some awkward incidents over the past few years. In Octo
ber 2006, a Chinese submarinestalkedtheUSS KittyHawk and then
surfaced within a torpedo's firing range of it. In November
2007, the
Chinese denied theUSS KittyHawk carrierstrikegroup entryinto
seas and
a
seeking respite from building
did make a visit to Hong
(The Kitty Hawk
a
in 2010.) InMarch
handful of pla navy ships harassed
2009,
Victoria Harbor when
deteriorating weather.
Kong
itwas
while itwas openly
theU.S. surveillanceship theUSNS Impeccable
in the
conducting operations outside China's 12-mile territorial limit
South China Sea, blocking itsway and pretending to ram it.These are
the actions not of a great power but of a still immature one.
China's assertiveness at sea is also demonstrated by its capital pur
chases.Beijing isdeveloping asymmetricniche capabilitiesdesigned
to block theU.S. Navy from entering the East China Sea and other
its destroyer fleet and
Chinese coastal waters. China has modernized
has plans to acquire one or two aircraft carriers but is not acquiring
across the board. Instead, it has focused on building new
warships
classes of conventional, nuclear attack, and ballistic missile submarines.
a former
to Seth
deputy undersecretary of the
According
Cropsey,
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The GeographyofChinesePower
of the Congressional
Research
Navy, and Ronald O'Rourke
a
submarine force larger than the U.S.
Service, China could field
U.S.
Navy's, which has 75 submarines in commission, within 15 years.
the Chinese navy, says Cropsey, plans to use over-the
Moreover,
horizon radars, satellites, seabed sonar networks, and cyberwarfare in
the serviceof antiship ballisticmissiles. This, alongwith Chinas
to
burgeoning submarine fleet, is designed
eventually deny theU.S.
access to
western Pacific.
Navy easy
significant portions of the
As part of its effortto control itsoffshorewaters in theTaiwan Strait
and the East China
Sea, China
is also improving itsmine-warfare
capability,buying fourth-generationjet fightersfromRussia, and
some 1,500 Russian surface-to-air missiles
coast.
deploying
along its
Furthermore, even as they are putting fiber-optic systems underground
and moving their defense capabilities deep intowestern China, out of
an
are
potential enemies' naval missile range, the Chinese
developing
offensive strategy to strike that icon ofU.S. power, the aircraft carrier.
China is not going to attack aU.S. carrier anytime soon, of course,
and it is stilla longway fromdirectlychallengingtheUnited States
militarily.But itsaim is todevelop suchcapabilitiesalong itsseaboard
to dissuade
theU.S. Navy from getting between the first island chain
coast whenever and wherever itwants. Since the
and the Chinese
to
essence of power, this
ability
shape one's adversary's behavior is the
is evidence that a Greater China is being realized at sea as on land.
straight
to
taiwan
important
to the advent of a Greater China is the future of
Taiwan. The issue ofTaiwan is often discussed inmoral terms:
Beijing
talks about the need to consolidate the national patrimony and
unify
Most
China for the good of all ethnicChinese;Washington talks about
preserving thismodel democracy. But the real issue is something else.
As U.S. General Douglas MacArthur
put it,Taiwan is an "unsinkable
aircraft carrier"midway up China's seaboard. From there, say the naval
an outside power such as the
and Yoshihara,
strategists Holmes
States can "radiate" power along China's coastal
periphery. If
Taiwan returned to the bosom ofmainland China, theChinese navy not
an
only would suddenly be in
advantageous strategic position vis-a-vis
United
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Robert D.
Kaplan
the first island chain but also would be freedup to project power
to an
beyond it
unprecedented degree. The adjective "multipolar" is
thrown around liberally to describe the next world order;
only the
fusingofTaiwan with theChinese mainland would mark the real
of a multipolar military order in East Asia.
to a 2009 rand
According
study by the year 2020, theUnited
emergence
States
will no longerbe able to defendTaiwan froma Chinese attack.The
will by thattimebe able todefeattheUnited
Chinese, arguesthereport,
States in awar in theTaiwan Strait even if theUnited States has f-22s,
two carrier strikegroups, and continued access to theKadena Air Base,
inOkinawa, Japan. The report
emphasizes the air battle. The Chinese
would stillhave to land tensof thousandsof troopsby sea andwould
be susceptible toU.S.
submarines. Yet the report,with all its caveats,
does highlighta disturbingtrend.China is just 100miles away from
the United
States must project military power
Taiwan, whereas
from half aworld away and with more limited access to
foreign bases
todeny theU. S.Navy
thanithad duringtheColdWar. China s strategy
entry into certain waters is designed not only to keep U.S. forces away
generally but also, specifically, to foster itsdominance overTaiwan.
Beijing ispreparingto envelopTaiwan not justmilitarilybut eco
nomically and socially, too. Some 30 percent ofTaiwan's exports go to
China. There are 270 commercial flights per week between Taiwan
and the mainland. Two-thirds of Taiwanese
companies have made
in
in
investments
China
the last five years. Half a million tourists go
to the island
from the mainland
annually, and 750,000 Taiwanese
reside inChina for about half of every year. Increasing integration ap
pears likely; how it comes about, however, is uncertain and will be
pivotal for the future of great-power politics in the region. If the
United States simply abandons Taiwan to Beijing, then Japan, South
Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and other U.S. allies in the Pacific
Ocean, as well as India and even some African states, will begin to
doubt the strength ofWashington's
commitments. That could en
courage those states tomove closer toChina and thus allow the emer
gence of a Greater China of trulyhemispheric proportions.
and Taipei must consider asym
This is one reason whyWashington
metric ways to counter China militarily.The aim should be not to defeat
China in awar in theTaiwan Strait but tomake the prospect ofwar seem
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The GeographyofChinesePower
costlytoBeijing.The United Statescould thenmaintain its
prohibitively
with its alliesby keepingTaiwan functionally
credibility
independent
until China became a more liberal society.The Obama administrations
announcement, in early 2010, that itwould sell $6.4 billion worth of
weapons toTaiwan is thus vital to theUnited States' position vis-a-vis
China, and inEurasia overall. And the goal of transformingChina do
not a
mestically is
pipe dream: themillions ofChinese touristswho travel
toTaiwan see itsspirited
titlesin
politicaltalkshowsand the subversive
itsbookstores. And yet, somewhat counterintuitively, amore democratic
China could be an even more dynamic great power than a repressive
China would be, in an economic sense and hence in amilitary sense, too.
In addition to concentrating its forces on Taiwan,
the Chinese
navy is projecting more power in the South China Sea, Chinas gateway
to the Indian Ocean and to theworld s
hydrocarbon transport route.
The
challenges
of piracy, radical Islam, and the rise of India's navy
resideall along theway, includingnear thebottlenecksthrough
which
a
large proportion of China's oil tankers and merchant ships must
pass. In terms of overall strategic significance, the South China Sea
could become, as some have said, a "second Persian Gulf." Nicholas
the twentieth-century scholar of geopolitics, noted that
states have
throughout history,
engaged in "circumferential and trans
marine expansion" to gain control of adjacent seas. Greece
sought
control over theAegean, Rome over theMediterranean,
theUnited
now China over the South China
States over the Caribbean?and
Spykman,
Sea. Spykman called the Caribbean
"the American Mediterranean"
to underscore its importance to theUnited States. The South China
Sea may become "theAsian Mediterranean"
and the heart of political
geography in coming decades.
insecurities
liquid
is, however, a contradiction at the heart of China's efforts to
sea in theAsian Mediterranean
and beyond. On the
project power at
one hand, China seems intent on
access to
denying U.S. vessels easy
its coastal seas. On the other, it is still
incapable of protecting its lines
of communication at sea, which would make any attack on a U.S.
There
warship
futile, since theU.S. Navy
foreign
af
fa
could simply cut offChinese
irs- May/June 2010
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[37]
en
Robert D. Kaplan
Chinese ships in thePacific and Indian
ergysuppliesby interdicting
oceans.
even bother
access ifyou never intend to
to
Why
trying
deny
enforce it?According to the defense consultant Jacqueline Newmyer,
so favorable" that "itwill
to create "a
Beijing aims
disposition of power
new
not
to use force to secure its interests."
Showcasing
actually have
weapons systems,building port facilitiesand listeningposts in the
Pacific and Indian oceans, giving military aid to littoral states located
between Chinese
of these
territory and the Indian Ocean?none
moves is secret;all aredeliberatedisplaysofpower.Rather thanfight
States outright, theChinese seek to influenceU.S. behavior
so as to avoid a confrontation.
precisely
Nonetheless, there seems to be a hard edge to some of Chinas naval
activities. China is constructing a major naval base on the southern tip
theUnited
ofHainan Island, smack in theheart of the South China Sea, with
to 20 nuclear and
underground facilities that could accommodate up
diesel-electric submarines. This is an exercise ofMonroe Doctrine
over
waters. China may have no
style sovereignty
nearby international
intention of going towar with theUnited States today or in the future,
but motives can change. It is better to track capabilities instead.
The current security situation at the edges ofEurasia is fundamentally
was in the firstyears after
more
World War II. As
complicated than it
American hegemony ebbs and the size of theU.S. Navy declines or
will
plateaus, while Chinas economy and military grow, multipolarity
is
increasingly define power relationships inAsia. The United States
dozens
providing Taiwan with 114 Patriot air defense missiles and
is building
of advanced military communications
systems. China
Island and developing
submarine pens on Hainan
underground
are
continuing tomodernize
antiship missiles. Japan and South Korea
a
their fleets. India is building
great navy. Each of these states is
to
adjust the balance of power in its favor.
seeking
This iswhy U.S. Secretaryof StateHillary Clintons rejectionof
or
as a relic of the past is either
disingenuous
balance-of-power politics
on inAsia, and the United
an arms race
going
misguided. There is
States will have to face this reality when it substantially reduces its
no Asian
state has any
and Iraq. Although
forces inAfghanistan
incentive to go towar, the risk ofmiscalculations about the balance of
power will increase with time and with the buildup of air and naval
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forcesin theregion(ifonlybyChina and India).Tensions on landmay
reinforce tensions at sea: the power vacuums that China is now filling
will indue course bring it into uneasy contact with, at aminimum, India
and Russia. Once-empty
spaces are becoming crowded with people,
roads,pipelines, ships?and missiles.The Yale political scientistPaul
Bracken warned in 1999 thatAsia was becoming a closed geography
and faced a crisis of "room." That process has only continued since.
So can theUnited States work to preserve stability inAsia, protect its
allies there, and limit the emergence of aGreater China while avoiding
a conflict
As
with Beijing?Offshorebalancingmay not be sufficient.
me
one former
high-ranking Indian official told
early this year,major
U.S. allies inAsia (such as India,Japan,Singapore,and SouthKorea)
want theU.S. Navy and theU.S. Air Force to act in "concert" with their
own forces?so that theUnited States will be an
integral part ofAsia's
a
not
force lurking over the distant
merely
landscape and seascape,
betweenhagglingwith theUnited
horizon.There is a big difference
States over basing rights, as the Japanese have been doing recently, and
a
wanting wholesale withdrawal ofU.S. forces.
plan that has been making the rounds in the Pentagon argues
. . .
that the United States could "counter Chinese
strategic power
without direct military confrontation" with aU.S. fleet of just 250 ships
(down from the 280 ithas now) and a 15percent cut in defense spending.
One
This plan, designed by the retired
U.S. Marine colonel Pat Garrett,
is significant because
it introduces into the Eurasian
equation the
strategic significance ofOceania. Guam and the Caroline, Marshall,
Northern Mariana,
and Solomon
islands are all U.S.
territories,
commonwealths with defense agreements with theUnited States, or
independent states thatwould probably be open to such agreements.
will grow in importance because it is both relatively close to
East Asia and outside the zone inwhich China is eager to
deny easy
access toU.S.
a four-hour
is
Guam
from
North
warships.
only
flight
Korea and a two-day sail fromTaiwan. Itwould be less provocative for
theUnited States to keep bases inOceania
in the future than ithas been
Oceania
for ittokeep troopsinJapan,SouthKorea, and thePhilippines.
Andersen Air Force Base, on Guam,
already is themost command
ing platform fromwhich theUnited States projects hard power
anywhere.With
100,000 bombs and missiles and a store of 66 million
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gallons of jet fuel, it is theU.S. Air Forces biggest strategic "gas-and
and f/a-i8
go" facility in theworld. Long lines of c-17 Globemasters
Hornets fillthe base's runways. Guam is also home to aU.S. submarine
as a naval base. It and the
nearby Northern
squadron and is expanding
Mariana
Islands are both almost equidistant from Japan and the
Strait ofMalacca.
And the southwestern tip of Oceania?namely,
the offshore anchorages of the Australian-owned
Ashmore
Islands
and Cartier Islet and the adjacent seaboard ofwestern Australia itself
to Perth)?looks
out from below the Indonesian
(from Darwin
archipelago toward the Indian Ocean. Thus, under Garrett 'splan, the
U.S. Navy and theU.S. Air Force could take advantage of Oceania's
to constitute a
"regional presence in being" located "just
geography
over the horizon" from the informal borders of a Greater China and
the main
(The phrase "regional presence
shipping lanes of Eurasia.
in being" echoes the British naval historian Sir Julian Corbett's "fleet in
a
to a
being" of hundred years ago, which referred
dispersed collection
of ships that can quickly coalesce into a unified fleet ifnecessary. "Just
over the horizon" reflects a confluence of offshore
balancing and
a concert of
participation in
powers.)
air
the
and sea presence inOceania would be a
U.S.
Strengthening
a
at all cost and
compromise approach between resisting Greater China
assentingto a futureinwhich theChinese navypoliced the firstisland
ensure thatChina paid a steep price for any
approach would
military aggression againstTaiwan. Itwould also allow theUnited States
to scale back its so-called legacy bases on the first island chain but
nonetheless allow U.S. ships and planes to continue to patrol the area.
The Garrett plan also envisions a dramatic expansion ofU.S. naval
It does not envision enlarging existing
activity in the Indian Ocean.
U.S. bases, however; it anticipates relying on bare-bones facilities
theMaldives, Mauritius,
in the Andaman
Islands, the Comoros,
Reunion, and the Seychelles (some ofwhich are run directly or indi
as well as on defense agreements with
rectly by France and India),
and Singapore. This would ensure free navigation
Brunei, Malaysia,
chain. This
and unimpeded energyflows throughoutEurasia. And by both
the importance of existing U.S. bases in Japan and
de-emphasizing
South Korea and diversifying the United States' footprint around
Oceania, the plan would do away with easy-to-target "master" bases.
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The GeographyofChinesePower
The United States'hold on thefirstislandchain isbeginningto be
to the
pried loose anyway. Local populations have become less agreeable
presence of foreign troops in theirmidst. And the rise of China makes
and appealingat once?mixed feelingsthatcould
Beijing intimidating
complicate theUnited States' bilateral relations with itsPacific allies. It
is about time.The current crisis inU.S.-Japanese
relations?which has
arisen because the inexperienced Hatoyama
government wants to
rewrite the rules of the bilateral relationship in its favor even as it talks
of developing deeper tieswith China?should
have occurred years ago.
The United States'stillextraordinarily
paramountpositioninthePacific
Ocean
is an outdated legacy ofWorld War
II, a function of the devas
tation thatChina, Japan, and the Philippines sufferedduring the
conflict.Nor can theUnited States' presence on the Korean Peninsula,
a
awar that ended over half a century ago, last forever.
byproduct of
A Greater China may be emerging politically, economically, or
on the Indian Ocean,
in Southeast Asia,
militarily in Central Asia,
and in thewestern Pacific.But just beyond thisnew realmwill be a
stream ofU.S.
and
warships, many perhaps headquartered inOceania
partnering with naval forces from India, Japan, and other democracies.
And in time, as China's confidence grows, its blue-water force could
a less territorial
a
develop
approach and itself be drawn into
large
naval
alliance.
regional
In the meantime, it isworth noting that, as the
political scientist
out
in 1999, inmilitary terms, the
Robert Ross pointed
relationship be
tween theUnited States and China will be more stable thanwas the one
between theUnited
States and the Soviet Union. This
is because of the
particular geography of East Asia. During theCold War, U.S. maritime
power alone was insufficient to contain the Soviet Union; a significant
land force inEurope was also required. But no such land forcewill ever
be required around the edge ofEurasia, because even as theUnited States'
land presence around the borders of a Greater China diminishes, the
U.S. Navy will continue to be stronger than the Chinese navy.
Still, the very fact ofChina's rising economic and military power will
exacerbate U.S.-Chinese
tensions in the years ahead. To
paraphrase
theUnited States, the hegemon of theWestern Hemi
Mearsheimer,
sphere,will try to prevent China from becoming the hegemon ofmuch
of theEastern Hemisphere. This could be the
signal drama of the age.?
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