Critical Geopolitics and the ‘China Challenge’ in the post-Coronavirus World
By THO Contributor, Tarik Oguzlu
The word ‘geopolitics’ consists of two different words.
‘Geo’ is the abbreviation of geography. ‘Politics’ means deciding who gets
what, how and when. Geography consists of two words, geo and graphy. ‘Geo’
means earth and ‘graphy’ means writing. Geopolitics means the politics of
writing the earth. The fundamental claim of critical geopolitical studies is
that all kinds of geopolitical understandings are subjective and reflect
particular values and previously conceived national interests. There is not an
objective scientific understanding of geopolitics as claimed by traditional
geopolitical thinkers. Naming particular physical locations as they are and
attributing meanings to geographical locations are all political exercises in
the background. There is not a ‘birds’ eye view’ of geopolitics which is
claimed to be timeless and ahistorical.
From the perspective of critical geopolitics, meanings
attributed to particular geographical locations emanate from deeply held
political interests and subjective understandings of identity. All geopolitical
claims are for someone and form some purpose. Power relations determine
purchasing value of geopolitical understandings. Throughout history different
meanings have been attributed to geographical sites. The question worth asking
from the perspective of critical geopolitics is ‘which political interests do particular
geopolitical conceptualizations serve?’ The question of whose geopolitical
imagination will prevail in the final analysis will be profoundly determined by
the distribution of power capabilities within the international system.
Why is it that Russia calls the geographical locations in
its neighborhood as near abroad? Near to whom? Another example concerns the
American efforts to define the struggle against jihadist terrorism in the
post-September 11 era as a crusade or global war on terror? Who coins these
terms and for which purposes? Why do they need to be defined as a crusade, but
not a struggle against terrorism?
Why do many people today tend to believe that one of the
major faultiness in global politics runs through civilizational differences?
Why did late Samuel Huntington write influential essays and a book on the idea
of clash of civilizations? Was he truly defining the picture as it is or was
his goal to help revive and strengthen American leadership absent the existential
Soviet threat? Was he trying to find a new enemy whose elimination would
require American global leadership and military power?
In a time of intensifying geopolitical competition between
the United States and China, which increasingly involves the employment of
sharp power instruments by both powers, it would be worth examining the key
characteristics of China’s challenge to the liberal international order. In
parallel to its increasing material power capability, China is also posing
fundamental challenges to the normative fabric of the liberal world order.
For long the US-led led international organizations have not
only enabled western actors to materialize their interests across the globe but
also perpetuate the core liberal assumption that there is only one route to
modernity and development, i.e., the western way. Acting as the gatekeepers to
the western international community, such international organizations have long
played key roles in the socialization of erstwhile non-western states into the
constitutive norms, rules and values of the Western world. Since its opening up
to the world economy in late 1970s, western powers hoped that China would gradually
transform into one of the responsible stakeholders of the liberal international
order and adopt its core values, such as consolidation and promotion of the
principles of individual entrepreneurship, democratic way of government,
minimum state involvement in economy, rule of law, free trade, secularization
of societal relations and respect for multiculturalism.
The main reason of such optimism was that China benefited
from becoming a part of the capitalist world economy and its double-digit
economic development was long made possible by its economic interaction with
the United States. However, it is now the case that China’s adoption of
capitalist practices has not paved the way for its liberal democratic
transformation and the United States, under Obama and Trump administrations,
have begun defining China as a strategic rival that needs to be contained.
Looking from the American perspective, the ‘strategy of engagement’ has now
given way to the ‘strategy of containment’. At stake now is whether China’s
evolving approach to liberal international order justifies a radical change in
American approach towards China, away from engagement to containment.
At closer inspection, it seems that the maintenance of
regional and global stability is still in China’s national interests. As of
today, particularly given the protectionist trade war that President Trump has
waged on China, China’s galloping internal challenges and growing criticism of
China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing is not in a position of
risking the gains of its ongoing development process by adopting an hardline approach
towards the United States and its neighbors.
China has the largest reserves in US dollars and its access
to American market, technology and foreign direct investment is still important
for its economic modernization. China does not have the luxury of postponing
its transformation into an economy in which Chinese companies produce mainly
technology-intensive high value-added goods and domestic consumption increases
to such an extent that China’s economic development is not negatively affected
by recessions and contractions in developed western economies. Chinese economy
cannot survive long on the principles of export-led growth and high domestic
savings. Besides, an aggressive stance against its neighbors will likely push
them further closer to the arms of the United States, thereby tarnishing
Chinese attempts at manufacturing soft power.
China owes its meteoric rise in global politics to its
efforts to become a part of the capitalist world economy. Its influence in
global politics arises from the intense economic relationships that it has
developed with many other countries. China has now become the number one
trading-partner of more than one hundred countries, including many traditional
allies of the United States across the globe. China is still the global factory of
merchandise goods and it needs to import many raw materials from abroad because
it is a resource poor country. If China wants to benefit from its growing
economic relations with other countries, such as through the Belt and Road
Imitative, the message that Chinese leaders have long been giving should
continue to resonate: China’s rise also means the rise of others. For China’s
‘no-strings attached’ development aid policy not to be seen as imperial,
China’s economic rise should continue benefiting others as well. The
improvement of infrastructural capacities of the countries on which China is
dependent for raw materials and to which China exports goods are in the final
analysis in China’s national economic interests.
An important characteristic of China’s rise also relates to
its continental size and huge population. Because size matters in international
politics, every small increase in Chinese per capita income will both lift many
Chinese people out of poverty and increase China’s share in global economy.
Despite the fact the per capita income in China is still less than ten
thousands US dollars, China will likely overtake the United States as the
largest economy by no later than the mid-century. Any war with the United
States will certainly postpone this. Chinese are strategically patient and
would not want to squander all their gains by adopting an assertive stance in
global governance in the post coronavirus age.
China’s challenge to the liberal world order closely varies
with its civilizational state identity and core values of the Chinese society,
such as a father-like status of the state in the eyes of people, unitary state
identity, territorial integrity, realpolitik security culture, societal
cohesion, primacy of family bonds over individuality, primacy of state
sovereignty over popular sovereignty, state’s unquestioned involvement in
economics and social life, primacy of responsible and ethical statesmanship
over electoral legitimacy, resolving conflicts through societal mechanisms and
trust relationships rather than legal instruments, primacy of hierarchical
relations within the society over egalitarianism and primacy of shame culture
over guilt culture.
Another key characteristic of China’s rise is that despite
all counter allegations that Chinese foreign policy has turned out to become
more assertive and aggressive over the last decade Chinese leaders seem to have
been following a low key foreign policy orientation by avoiding rigid positions
on global issues unless core national interests are at stake, such as the
status of Taiwan, Tibet, Uighur region, South China Sea and East China Sea.
Chinese leaders also avoid taking global responsibilities. This is a challenge
mainly because the costs of maintaining global stability and providing global
commons will dramatically increase absent the Chinese contribution. On the
other hand such a reluctant approach to global governance might suggest that
China is not resolved to replace the United States as the global hegemon.
China is not openly questioning the established western
liberal order by either forming anti-western coalitions of states or doing its
best to make sure that western-led international organizations do not operate
smoothly. It is for sure that China, along with many other rising powers, wants
to see that its growing ascendance in global politics be accommodated
institutionally and peacefully. However, should western powers decline to
accommodate China, the latter will not hesitate to help establish alternative
institutional platforms under its guidance, such as the Asia Infrastructure and
Investment Bank and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. China
values external democratization of global politics rather than internal
democratization of national politics.
Today’s China is not pursuing a strategy of global hegemony.
Defining their empire-state as the Middle Kingdom, Chinese rulers have never
adopted an imperial mission whose essential logic was to help transform others
in China’s image. Despite the fact that they believe in the superiority of
their civilization, Chinese rulers have never engaged in an empire building
project whose goal was to bring civilization to barbarians. The expectation was
that others would at some time in future accept and respect the legitimacy of
China’s primacy and pay their tributes to Beijing in return for Chinese
benevolence and rewarding economic relations. Embracing a benign imperial
mindset, today’s rulers of China want to make sure that a decentralized
imperial order take place, first in East and South East Asia and then globally,
in which China sits at the center and other states respect the superiority of
Chinese values as well as China’s centrality in their development.
China is against the idea of a universal civilization as
well as the practices of setting global standards of human rights. From Chinese
perspective, rules, values and norms are relative and products of different
time and space configurations. Similar to other great powers, China hopes that
its values and norms are shared by others. However, it does not construct its
foreign relations on the basis of a normative understating in that it is
China’s historical and civilizational mission to project its values abroad. On
the contrary, Chinese leaders appear to believe that the main features of
Chinese civilizations have already shaped the dynamics of interstate and
transnational relations in East and South East Asia and that the more
interdependent economic and strategic relations China builds with its
neighbors, within the framework of realist Westphalian order, the more leverage
Beijing will have over other capitals.
It is probable that its historical, civilizational and
cultural characteristics on one hand and developmentalist economic philosophy
on the other will likely affect China’s contemporary foreign and security
policies in a more reconciliatory, benign and cooperative fashion. However,
this does in no way suggest that the process of climbing up the ladder of power
will never cause geopolitical rivalries and conflicts in the years ahead.
With health security and economic prosperity becoming more and more important each passing day, China’s political values and economic polices might appear to many as more attractive than political values and economic policies of liberal capitalist states. With states acquiring more power than markets and security concerns taking precedence over liberty, China’s ability to help shape the emerging norms and rules of post-coronavirus geopolitics might increase at the expense of the United States. Time will tell.