In the past decade or so, the United States’ China policy has been dominated by China hawks, and “China doves” have almost been obliterated. China hawks control both the Republican and Democratic parties. Recently, a group of “China superhawks” have appeared in the US. They believe that China hawks’ general stance and actions are too timid. Therefore, they demand more stringent and “farsighted” policies to “defeat” China, thwart China’s rise, and eventually bring about China’s long-term isolation and decline. These China superhawks are especially rampant in the Republican Party. In September, the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives passed 25 bills against China during its so-called “China Week” aimed at harming China in trade, technology, finance, agriculture and culture.
All China hawks believe the US dialogue and engagement with China has failed miserably over the past few decades. They charge that US policymakers have long been oblivious to China’s “existential threat” to their country, “naively” believing that the US can transform China through trade, exchanges and dialogue, and make Beijing adopt Western institutions and values, US global leadership, and the US-led international order. They believe that this policy has not only failed to bring about China’s “peaceful evolution” but facilitated the rise of an “authoritarian” China that, as the US’ “peer competitor”, poses a “fatal threat” to the US.
The position of the China superhawks is not just a shift but a radical departure from the past. It includes the following essential tenets:
First, China is the most potent enemy in US history, who seriously endangers US hegemony and the “liberal international order” it leads, who bullies other countries and plunders global resources, and who attempts to establish a new international order that excludes the US and embodies authoritarianism and Han chauvinism. The rise of China will also dismantle the US’ liberal democracy and market economy and the “universal values” behind them, ultimately turning the US into an authoritarian nation. The potential consequences of China’s rise are dire and cannot be overstated, and as the implacable and incorrigible archrival of the US, the two countries can’t coexist peacefully.
Second, since the rivalry between China and the US is crucial to the survival of the US and the well-being of the world, the US must gain the final victory. American strategists Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea contended that “the goal of Washington’s contest with China should indeed be victory, and victory means that the Chinese government no longer has the will or ability to harm the vital interests of the US.”
Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, another two China superhawks, asserted that “the US shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it.” For them, “What would winning look like? China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends. And the Chinese people — from ruling elites to everyday citizens — would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad.”
Third, although Pottinger and Gallagher did not explicitly suggest that the US should promote “regime change” in China, they, however, hinted at inciting the Chinese people to overthrow the Communist Party of China. Undeniably, all China superhawks “secretly” harbor this political aspiration. So they seek various ways to weaken and overthrow the leadership of the CPC. Jack Cooper argued: “Washington should hope for the mellowing or breakup of Chinese power.” In his view, the US should wait for the CPC to weaken and collapse under the weight of its shortcomings or pressure from the Chinese people. However, he didn’t rule out the possibility of some role for the US to “nudge China in a better direction”.
As an overburdened and overstretched power, the US does not have enough strength to be a credible enemy of China. All the claims of the Chinese superhawks are just the pipe dreams and political narcissism of some naive people in a declining country who have no regard for reality and overestimate their country’s capabilities
Fourth, some China superhawks believe that China’s rise has ended. The US can take advantage of China’s increasingly severe internal difficulties to destroy China. Others reckon that China still has the potential to continue to rise. However, they think the US is still more powerful than China in overall national strength, but the gap is rapidly narrowing. In the short term, such as in the next decade, time is still on the side of the US. The US must do its utmost to thwart China’s rise during this period. It is best to incite the Chinese people’s resistance against the CPC and cultivate opposition forces, divide China’s top leadership, and instigate rebellion in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Xizang autonomous region, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, thereby igniting China’s implosion or involution and ultimately achieving regime change in China.
Fifth, it is interesting that although the China superhawks are sharpening their knives against China, none of them has proposed launching a kinetic war against China. They do not believe the US has enough military power to defeat China. They know very well that if the US launches a war against China, their country will be devastated, and so will its global hegemony.
Sixth, since a war against China is not feasible, the US must unite with its allies and other countries to implement extremely severe containment and isolation strategies diplomatically, militarily, economically and technologically against China. Kroenig and Negrea suggested that Washington could further shift the balance of power in its favor by continuing to expand and deepen its global alliance system in the Indo-Pacific, including with new arrangements such as AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and NATO-IP4, which brings together NATO with four Indo-Pacific partners (Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand). The US should also form counterbalancing coalitions with other country groupings, such as the European Union, that increasingly see Beijing as a “systemic rival”.
Jonathan DT Ward asserted that the US grand strategy must break the convergence between the interests of the CPC and Western business and investment institutions, align American businesses and investment houses with the US’ near- and long-term national security, and triumph over the CPC in the global economic arena. In his view, the economic containment of China involves restricting or withdrawing China’s access to technology, capital and markets globally.
China superhawks are adamant that the US and its allies must massively expand their military power. In Ward’s words, “What is necessary is the decisive superiority of the combined military power of the world’s democracies.” Similarly, the US must prevent Beijing from regaining Taiwan by force. The key to curbing China’s rise is to hamper its technological development. The US must completely decouple from China in technology and trade, even if it and its allies have to incur hefty short-term losses. The US must revoke the “most favored nation” status granted to China and impose heavy tariffs on Chinese goods and services exported to the US. In the process of containing China, the US must ensure that American and Western companies cooperate with the US strategy, especially large-scale divestment from China, to prevent China from obtaining high technology.
Seventh, China superhawks are particularly disgusted, fearful and afraid of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Ward claimed that the BRI is a gambit to encircle the US with continental-sized economic dependencies on China in the decades ahead. “Our underlying strategy must be to prevent the consolidation of Chinese expansion around the globe, to roll China back to its region, and impose costly military trade-offs that will force them to focus on Asia alone, abandoning global goals.”
Another China superhawk, Michael Sobolik, accused the BRI of sinister motives. He claimed that the BRI is not an economic development but a geopolitical strategy. He opined that “with an offensive framework in place, US policymakers could turn the tables and transform the BRI into an albatross to hang around the neck of the CPC. … Governments from London and Berlin to Canberra and Tokyo would need to join the effort to make the BRI-linked Chinese companies a pariah.”
The views of the China superhawks have yet to become the mainstream position of the US government and opposition parties. Still, it cannot be ruled out that their influence will increase, especially after Donald Trump becomes the US president again. However, the China superhawks’ stance is divorced from reality. They are essentially irrational emotional outbursts triggered by fear of China’s rise. The core problem is that they seriously misjudged the situation, overestimated the US’ ability to contain China, and underestimated China’s strength, thereby coming to the ludicrous conclusion that the US would eventually be able to “defeat” China.
In essence, the claims of the China superhawks have fallacies aplenty. First, they seriously distorted China’s strategic intentions, thereby designating China as the sworn enemy of the US. Under the spell of this wrong idea, they want the US to invest its resources in futile actions to contain China instead of using these resources to promote the well-being of American people. In this sense, the belligerent China superhawks are the scourge of the US.
Second, the Chinese superhawks grossly overestimate the US’ economic and military strength, while significantly underestimating China’s strength, development potential and resilience. Graham Allison maintained, “China must be recognized as a full-spectrum peer competitor. … China has displaced its competitor (the US) from its accustomed position as the top trading nation, the manufacturing workshop of the world, and exporter of high-tech products.” Further: “In the military rivalry, the era of US primacy is over. … Chinese anti-access/area denial systems have changed the game in its geographical periphery, which included Taiwan and the South and East China Seas.”
Nathan Simington lamented that “the current trend line is catastrophic. … China has manufacturing capabilities that trounce those of G7 countries and the economic depth to increase its military capacities while the US defense base declines.”
Third, those China superhawks who urge the US to bring about regime change in China are even more idiotic. Currently, the CPC enjoys tremendous prestige among the Chinese people and constantly strengthens its leadership position and ability to govern and develop the country. It is a fool’s errand to try to sow discord between the Chinese people and the CPC, let alone inciting the Chinese people to overthrow the CPC.
Fourth, the Chinese superhawks are very critical of US corporations, lambasting them as being unpatriotic, selfish and resistant to aligning with the US government’s China policy. Ward complained that “American business has not yet aligned with the cause of human rights and US national security. … American businesses and business organizations today often push back against US government efforts to secure supply chains or change the structure of global trade.” Most probably, the China superhawks’ demands for American companies will be brushed aside. Instead, many US corporations are clamoring for the US government to change course, but to no avail. At a time when the global economy is in trouble, China’s massive and increasingly open domestic market is very attractive to US companies. Unless the US government takes strict legal measures to ban US companies from doing business with China, the attempts of the China superhawks are doomed to fail.
Fifth, the China superhawks believe that by exerting colossal pressure on US allies, they can force them to ultimately succumb to the US’ demand to jointly contain China. However, almost all US allies have close and mutually beneficial economic relations with China. They have long been frustrated with the US’ behavior that hurt others and themselves. They do not believe that the US, increasingly practicing isolationism and selfishness, would take care of their interests. Asking them to decouple from China completely will prompt strong resistance and backlash.
Sixth, although China superhawks consistently call for all-around decoupling from China, this is not feasible. After decades of development, China and the US have become deeply entangled economically. A hasty decoupling will only cause unbearable losses to the US. The US has indeed decoupled from China to a certain extent in terms of cutting-edge technology and people-to-people exchanges. Still, the magnitude of damage caused to China by this limited decoupling is far lower than what the China superhawks would accept.
Finally, it must be pointed out that the Chinese superhawks never seriously calculated the damages China’s robust countermeasures could cause the US. China has vast capabilities to wreak havoc with the US in many fields.
In general, the US is currently heavily in debt. Its industrial production capacity is sluggish, its military strength is increasingly unable to support its global hegemony, financial crises can break out anytime, domestic political, social and economic problems are legion, the American people are distracted and divided, and the US international clout is sapping. As an overburdened and overstretched power, the US does not have enough strength to be a credible enemy of China. All the claims of the Chinese superhawks are just the pipe dreams and political narcissism of some naive people in a declining country who have no regard for reality and overestimate their country’s capabilities.
The author is a professor emeritus of sociology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a consultant for the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
