US-Chinese relations: still a vexing security issue

In June 1995, Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, was arrested after entering China and charged with espionage for providing secrets to foreign organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. Two months later, Shanghai-born Wu was released.

According to Robert Suettinger, a senior intelligence officer in the Clinton administration, there was “no deal” hammered out between Beijing and Washington over Wu’s release. But there was an unspoken agreement.

“It was a ‘diplomatic gavotte’ … there were understandings that were never articulated, common expectations that were never formalised,” Suettinger writes in his 2003 work, Beyond Tiananmen.

If “understandings” and “common expectations” sound familiar, it is because they are. Last month, blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng was granted a fellowship to study at a law school in the US. Chen caused a diplomatic row after he escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing.

Sounding remarkably similar to Suettinger, the New York Times reported that the US-China agreement on Chen was a “complex understanding”.

Indeed, one can say that there is a high degree of stability in Sino-American ties now. Even as the Chen saga festered in May, General Liang Guanglie was in the US for the first visit by a Chinese defence chief in nine years.

In their recent Strategic and Economic Dialogue, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo agreed that both countries should avoid the historical fate associated with a status quo power and a rising one.

For many Asian countries keen on stability in Sino-American ties, all this sounds encouraging enough. The problem, however, is that current military deployments by both countries are merely kicking the can down the road.

Writing in Survival, a journal published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), IISS fellow Christian Le Miere sums up the problem. On the one hand, China and the US have sought to avoid direct confrontation. On the other, naval strategies by both have created a “pattern of nervous, ostentatious behaviour” that could lead to miscalculation. Le Miere said that China is replicating Germany’s 19th-century naval strategy of “fleet-in-being”. This does not seek command of the sea, but cedes control to stronger opposition in general.

But the use of “anti-access, area denial” (A2AD) capabilities such as submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles will inflict “unacceptable damage” on any naval forces sent to fight the PLA Navy.

Similarly, the US is using a “fleet-in-dispersal” strategy that offers “strategic space” to a potential rival (that is, China) and protects its forces from the rival’s reach. This includes the deployment of US Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to Singapore, the basing of 2,500 US Marines in Australia and the drawdown of US forces in Japan and South Korea.

But the LCS deployment in Singapore could be used to control traffic through the strategic Malacca Strait – a critical sea lane for China, writes Le Miere. In addition, the contingent of Marines is an “implicit threat” to China.

“The US is developing strategies to counter China’s A2AD capabilities, which in turn are being developed to annul the US Navy’s dominant position. The fleet-in-being strategy and its corollary, the fleet-in-dispersal strategy, are not without their risks,” he writes.

Not everyone agrees with Le Miere’s analysis. Professor Toshi Yoshihara, the co-author of Red Star Over The Pacific, argues that underlying tensions in the Sino-American relationship do not stem from the tactical deployments that Le Miere mentions. Rather, China might be emboldened by the US Navy’s shrinking size, which has been halved from nearly 600 ships in the early 1990s to fewer than 300 last year.

“It is America's inability to take a big hit and recover – and the risk aversion that this induces in Washington and in the fleet – that may embolden China,” says Professor Toshihara, who works at the US Naval War College.

Whatever the cause that may embolden China, one thing is certain: Despite the intensification of high-level dialogue between China and the US in recent years, the security dilemma still persists.

The logic of this concept, of a security dilemma, is straightforward: one state’s attempt to increase its security leads to a diminution of security for another. A spiral of mutual insecurity follows, leading to arms races and the possible outbreak of outright hostilities.

Security dilemmas are commonplace in international relations. But the worrying aspect of the Sino-American dilemma is that it persists despite high-level engagement between the two sides. In this sense, China and the US are talking past each other. Both are convinced that their military deployments in the Pacific are non-threatening. But the other party is not convinced.

A good example is the annual ruction sparked by the “Report On Chinese Military Power” issued by the Pentagon every year. This year’s report was couched in more diplomatic language. It said China’s military was maximising the “window of strategic opportunity” to foster a “positive external environment” for China. It noted too that Beijing sought to alleviate tensions over the South China Sea last year.

That said, the Pentagon said the Chinese “are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage”, and called, yet again, for more openness on the part of the PLA.

To that, China countered that its “justified and normal military development” had been unduly criticised in the report.

“So long as a country is not hostile to China, it will show no doubt or worry over such development,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei. He told Washington to “respect facts, change its mindset and stop its wrongdoing in issuing similar reports year after year”.

This lack of trust is fuelling an action-reaction dynamic and associated arms build-up in the region. Professor Toshihara calls this an “arms race in slow motion”.

Not all is lost. The antidote to the security dilemma is cooperation, communication and the forging of common ground. But the two countries have their work cut out for them.

US officials complain that Chinese counterparts are wont to break military interactions whenever a spat occurs. The riposte is that the US should stop harping about the Chinese military needing to be more responsible. As Dr Henry Kissinger, the US elder statesman, has noted, the Chinese find such lecturing “needlessly grating”.

Closer to home, it is understood that Beijing will not be sending its defence minister to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Last year, Gen Liang’s attendance at the dialogue marked a first. And to make the comparison more stark, the US is sending its “big three” to the dialogue – Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey and Pacific Command chief Samuel Locklear.

The absence of the Chinese defence minister will generate talk at the dialogue, long seen as the region’s premier gathering for defence officials. It will also accentuate the US’s highly-publicised pivot to Asia at China’s expense, and stress the need for further Sino-American interaction.

No one knows why the Chinese are downgrading their participation at the dialogue. But one thing is certain: the vexing problem of the Sino-US security dilemma will take some time to lick.