Category Archives: Reviews

How China's government escalates warnings before military action

The government of the People’s Republic of China has displayed a fairly consistent pattern of escalating signals followed by deterrent military deployments before engaging in a hot conflict, argues a new report [pdf] from the U.S. National Defense University. Reviewing each instance of armed conflict since 1949, as well as several cases that never made it that far, the authors suggest that the Chinese government has used evolving but similar signals, including statements by leaders and official publications, to indicate the degree of its resolve on a given issue.

The authors, Paul H.B. Godwin and Alice L. Miller, are experienced analysts of Chinese military and strategic history. Miller offers a framework for ranking the authoritativeness of various statements by leaders or in official media, one very similar to her account that was the basis of a post I did over at 88-Bar.

Godwin and Miller offer perhaps the clearest available review of the circumstances and signals that led up to China’s military engagements. For this alone, the paper is worth a read. They argue that China’s use of military force should be understood as divided between Taiwan-related and non-Taiwan-related cases. Non-Taiwan cases include the Korean War (from 1950), the 1962 border war with India, the 1963-75 deployment in North Vietnam, and the 1979 attack on Vietnam (as its ties to the USSR grew stronger). They are similarly thorough on confrontations over maritime claims, making this an essential read for those watching today’s events unfold.

Some interpretations are perhaps too confident in attributing intent to actions observed from afar. The accounts tend to assume a sort of Realist calculus undergirds decisions on each side and pushes for greater and more refined attention to Chinese signals in such situations. The result is a very strong framework for evaluating signals, one that fits the history presented in almost every case. It can be understood as a strong model fit to moderately jagged data.

Will past patterns continue?

Though the report does not claim to predict the future, there is a strong implication that the Chinese government’s signaling and deterrence patterns can be expected to continue. As the authors repeatedly note, however, China’s strength has increased, reshaping the playing field. They argue in part:

  • There are “indicators suggesting that changes in China’s security environment have reduced rather than increased the possibilities for military confrontation with the United States. Moreover, within PLA doctrinal development, increasing capabilities are as much related to deterrence as they are to offensive operations.”
  • There is enormous potential for damage to “China’s economic future and security” if the country is perceived as disruptive or aggressive.
  • “[T]he chances of a cross-strait military confrontation are now among the lowest they have been since 1949.”
  • It is improbable that China would strike first. If China escalated warnings and deployments, the United States would likely move more military force into the region, making a strike a losing proposition for China. A surprise attack, they argue, is unlikely as well.
  • In sum, military confrontation with the United States is unlikely on each of the potential triggers.

In the context of the report, these arguments assume a generally status quo scenario for signaling and deterrence. Left under-considered is the possibility that increased capabilities would be accompanied by a new pattern of signaling, deterrence, or offensive action. Indeed, the current situation in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the India borderlands, the cybersecurity area, etc., could be viewed as an “all-fronts” increase in activity. Are these all understood to be deterrent? If so, what new threats or challenges have they responded to? Did the external environment really turn that sour all at once?

The authors, I believe, would argue that these actions amount to a deterrent targeted at the United States, akin to efforts to prevent U.S. control of North Korea or North Vietnam. Of course, the U.S. government’s goals in the South China Sea and the western Pacific are very different than they was in those conflicts. But the fact of the matter is that there is an overall increase in Chinese deployments in the country’s maritime periphery. In the past, the report suggests, increased deployments were designed to deter specific actions by potential adversaries. Things are different today, and time will tell whether the signaling-deterrence pattern identified here holds.

A process-tracing media analyst’s treasure

The paper concludes with a remarkable compilation of Chinese government signals, ranked by authoritativeness, in three chronologies: the 1978–1979 Sino-Vietnamese border crisis; the 1961–1962 Sino-Indian border crisis; and signaling over Taiwan in 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2003–2004. Whatever happens in the future, these appendices are treasures for historians and the curious.

The following table (p. 32) outlines the report’s hierarchy of authoritativeness, by which the authors suggest observers should rate signals from the leadership, government bodies, and the People’s Daily.

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The appendices apply this framework and classify each signal to portray the incremental increase in authority of those delivering statements. Meanwhile, there is a corresponding “ascending order of threat,” included below:

■ X is “playing with fire” and may “get burned”
■ Beijing so far has “exercised the greatest restraint and forbearance” but this “should not be taken as weakness and submissiveness”
■ Do “not turn a deaf ear to China’s warnings”; China “cannot stand idly by”
■ “How far will you go? We shall wait and see”
■ “China’s forbearance has limits”; X is “deluding itself in thinking we are weak and can be bullied”
■ If X does not cease its behavior, it “will meet the punishment it deserves”
■ “Do not complain later that we did not give you clear warning in advance”
■ We have been “driven beyond forbearance” and are “forced to counterattack”; our “restraint was regarded as an invitation to bullying”; our “warnings fell on deaf ears”
■ “We will not attack if we are not attacked; if we are attacked, we will certainly counterattack.”

Regardless of the overall analysis’s  validity in the future, these are very useful guides for assessing signals. Add to this increasing transparency (at least in the form of rumors online) that might allow more detailed analysis of decision-making within the regime, and increased official and Track II contact between the Chinese and U.S. political leadership, and we might just have a recipe for better understanding.

This is my second or third attempt at an informal review, for a general-if-nerdy audience, of recently published academic and policy writing. Comments are very welcome below or by e-mail at mail // at // gwbstr // dot // com.

Evaluating 3 key recommendations of the Blair-Huntsman IP Commission report

The U.S. government needs to do more to stop the theft of U.S. intellectual property (IP), mostly by China, according to a new report produced by a group of political and business leaders under the leadership of Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence under Obama and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Jon Huntsman, former U.S. ambassador to China and former governor of Utah.

The report endorses the claim that recent developments in online IP theft represent “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” and names actors in China as responsible for “between 50% and 80% of the problem,” with India and Russia as secondary concerns. Further, the report  pushes for at least some IP theft to be prioritized as a matter of national security, not merely economic welfare.

Who’s behind the report? The “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” has the sound of a government-backed group; instead, it was backed by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and its new Slade Gorton International Policy Center*, named for one of the commission’s members, former Senator Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) — who was a member of the official 9-11 Commission. The rest of the membership is well qualified and, when politically affiliated, well balanced between Democrats and Republicans.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the individuals gathered independently over 11 months to produce a report on this particular problem. Thus, we should perhaps not be surprised to learn that they believe “the American response to date of hectoring governments and prosecuting individuals has been utterly inadequate to deal with the problem.” The resulting report is nonetheless carefully done, and it will be provocative both in the U.S. policy environment and in the ongoing trade and economic discussions between the United States and China.

Some will argue the measures recommended in the report don’t go far enough. Indeed, the commissioners explicitly do not recommend legalizing aggressive cyber attacks in retaliation for incursions. Meanwhile, some specific recommendations and the focus on China will add to ongoing concerns among Chinese investors that they face an unfair playing field when seeking investment opportunities in the United States. Finally, they note but do not evaluate the “sense that IP theft is justified by a playing field that benefits developed countries”—a real point of disagreement, especially when “fairness” in competition is a central goal.

In the remainder of this post, I evaluate three of the specific recommendations for underlying implications and potential successes or pitfalls.

Recommendation: “Designate the national security advisor as the principal policy coordinator for all actions on the protection of American IP.”

As the first recommendation and one that comes closest to calling for personal involvement on the part of the U.S. president, this statement deserves special attention. Specifically, the authors have clearly been careful about the extent to which they wish to declare IP protection a national security issue. “The theft of American IP poses enormous challenges to national security and the welfare of the nation,” the report states. It continues: “Although it is certainly true that not all problems rise to a national security challenge, the means by which IP is stolen (including foreign government involvement) and the recent assertion by the president’s national security advisor that the U.S. government must take action to safeguard American companies in response to massive cyber and other attacks demonstrate that IP theft is a national security priority.”

I’ve added emphasis to illustrate the tightrope walk being performed here. The authors are calling for IP theft to be coordinated by the president’s top national security advisor, but they are careful to qualify that not all instances constitute a challenge to national security. Meanwhile, the word “threat” is pointedly absent. This recommendation recognizes the important distinction between IP thefts that are obviously national security–related (for instance targeting military contractors) and those that are more of an economic or commercial challenge (for instance counterfeiting U.S. clothing brands).

Though the authors make the distinction between national security challenges and broader challenges, this boundary deserves a great amount of attention in policy and even ethical analysis. It is a boundary often blurred in journalism or think tank reports on the increasingly discussed cybersecurity issue. And it is a crucial distinction when establishing rules and policies for retaliation, whether commercial or otherwise. In any case, the elevation of the issue to top levels of government would mirror the perceived importance of the issue in U.S.–China relations over the past year.

Recommendation: “Empower the secretary of the treasury, on the recommendation of the secretary of commerce, to deny the use of the American banking system to foreign companies that repeatedly use or benefit from the theft of American IP.”

There are two elements worth noting here, in addition to the way in which the recommendation involves two more top officers of the U.S. executive branch.

First, denying access to the U.S. banking system is similar to sanctions we see elsewhere, including, for example, those targeting companies that do business with Iran contrary to international sanctions. Existing U.S. legislation has been used to name firms, including some from China, as ineligible to use the U.S. banking system. The recommendation here implicitly targets another major element of the financial system, too: listing on U.S. exchanges. Chinese companies are already on shaky ground in the United States exchanges due to regulatory conflicts regarding transparency and auditing. This could make the prospect of continued listing even more uncertain for Chinese firms, depending on what kind of process would lead to a ban. The question for the U.S. government and market is whether it would see a drastic decrease of Chinese listings in U.S. exchanges as a detriment. Some argue that keeping firms listed in the U.S. could help pressure them to engage in more internationally trusted accounting practices.

This leads to the second point: how determination of violations would be made. The report trusts that the Departments of Commerce and Treasury would be able to handle this well. However, without a transparent, responsive process, foreign firms including those from China may view a wide variety of transactions with the United States as highly risky. This has the potential for a real chilling effect on U.S.–China commercial activity.

Similarly, under a different recommendation advocating for quicker seizures (“sequester”) of suspected IP-violating goods being imported into the United States, the commission backs a “probable cause” standard for placing this hold, after which the exporting entity would have to prove that the goods were not IP-violating. I’m not a lawyer, but the combination of probable cause and the requirement to prove a negative seems ripe for abuse. (I stand willing to be schooled if U.S. case law would call for strict standards and transparency in such a policy.)

The commercial relations between the United States and China have been called the ballast of the bilateral relationship, without which the stormy seas of the 21st century would pose a greater risk of conflict or instability. Recently, the U.S. business community is increasingly concerned with IP theft and unfair practices. If the U.S. response to these concerns further sours  bilateral commercial ties by angering Chinese firms or triggering retaliation, rough waters may indeed be ahead.

Recommendation: “Consider the degree of protection afforded to American companies’ IP a criterion for approving major foreign investments in the United States under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. process.”

This recommendation is perhaps the most likely to raise eyebrows among Chinese policymakers and investors. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) is already a major point of concern for many Chinese who would wish to invest in the United States. The inter-agency body has the responsibility for evaluating foreign acquisitions and investments for national security concerns. For instance, if a Russian firm wanted to buy Boeing, CFIUS might reasonably seek to block the transaction, because aviation and aerospace is an important national security industry. Less clear-cut examples include the recently blocked acquisition by a Chinese firm of a wind farm in Oregon.

Some Chinese investors are nervous about the extent to which investment efforts might be arbitrarily rejected through the CFIUS process. U.S. experts including Dan Rosen of the Rhodium Group have argued that the CFIUS process is largely appropriate and not much of a barrier. Others in the U.S. argue that China itself restricts foreign control in a litany of sensitive industries, much broader than the areas covered by CFIUS. But adding a “strength of IP protection” criterion to the CFIUS process could be a drastic increase of the committee’s purview.

The authors are walking another tightrope: “As demonstrated by the flood of counterfeit parts discussed in chapter 1, as well as by widespread cyber infiltrations discussed in chapters 1 and 5, the Commission assesses that the theft of American intellectual property has direct implications for national security. Given that CFIUS has a large amount of flexibility in evaluating potential transactions, it seems appropriate for CFIUS to factor into its judgment the degree to which the foreign actor protects intellectual property” [emphasis added]. From this wording, we could take a less proactive reading: that CFIUS need not be given a new mandate, and indeed that it should already be considering IP insofar as it is a national security issue. The obvious question is whether the committee is already taking IP protection into account. (I have no idea, but others probably do.)

No matter the interpretation, this call for greater scrutiny by CFIUS will likely be of significant concern for Chinese investors and some in the Chinese government.

Conclusion

In summary, “The IP Commission Report” is an excellent resource, and it should be understood as moderately hawkish on IP protection issues, at least on China. It includes a specific list of policy measures that the authors believe would go too far. But it makes bold calls for action and tends toward the generous assessment of how much money and how many jobs are lost because of IP theft. Ultimately, the economic impact of IP theft is nearly impossible to estimate, though I could imagine a methodology that came in significantly lower than the “hundreds of billions of dollars a year” estimate.

The scope of the report is such that it does not evaluate how appropriate the IP laws and concepts of fairness being discussed are. Needless to say, many have faulted the copyright system for unduly empowering large copyright holders in book and music publishing, and many have questioned the ethical value of a patent on a life-saving drug that makes medicating patients prohibitively expensive. The issue of fairness is central here, and the Chinese (or broader developing economy) views of fairness deserve real attention. The reality of the world market is that it exists across legal regimes, ethical views, and enforcement capacities. New policies need to be based firmly in that reality.

 

*Disclosure: I briefly worked in communications strategy with NBR and interviewed Gorton for its website. I had no involvement with this report, nor did I know it was coming until this week.

Review: 'How New and Assertive is China's New Assertiveness' by Alastair Iain Johnston, Spring 2013

[This review is part of a new experiment. I have read for general impressions, main points, and potentially useful material for myself and others. This is not a detailed methodological or theoretical examination, nor is it a conscientious summary. I have tried to consider both specialist and generalist audiences. Comments are very welcome, as I hope to be doing this more often. -Graham]

Under Review

Johnston, Alastair Iain. “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” International Security 37:4 (2013): 7–48.

Review

isec.2013.37.issue-4.largecoverIain Johnston’s recent article in International Security recalls one of my favorite teaching pieces, which Johnston co-authored with Sheena Chestnut: “Is China Rising?” In that piece, Johnston and Chestnut asked the title question at a time when scholars, journalists, and pundits were instead asking about the implications of China’s rise. The new piece takes a similar tack, arguing that while “the new assertiveness meme has ‘gone viral,'” the evidence does not bear out a clear “assertive” turn in Chinese foreign policy.

Focusing on 2010, Johnston lays out seven areas in which China is supposed to have been more assertive and concludes that in most cases, a perception of new assertiveness is produced by one of a few mistakes. One is the classic cherry-picking problem (“selecting on the dependent variable”), in which arguments are based on instances that appear to support the assertiveness claim without examining those that might indicate cooperation. But the best of the argument comes in the one-by-one examination of seven major areas of supposed assertiveness, each of which has its problems. Johnston summarizes:

These seven major events in Chinese foreign policy in 2012 represent a mixture of new assertiveness (South China Sea); old assertiveness with a twist (the threat to sanction U.S. arms manufacturers that sell to Taiwan); reduced assertiveness (the Dalai Lama visit); probably predictable responses to exogenous shocks (Senkaku/Diaoyudao incident); the continuation of reactive/passive policies in the face of changed and less-hospitable diplomatic circumstances (Copenhagen, DPRK policy); and in one case, empirical inaccuracy (the South China Sea as a core interest claim). In toto, the differences across these cases suggest that there was no across-the-board new assertiveness in Chinese diplomacy in 2010 (31–32).

These points are generally well-made, and readers interested in any part of that laundry list might wish to engage with the details in the article. The article also examines four common explanations of the supposed new assertiveness (under “Problematic Causal Arguments”): change in the distribution of power; rising Chinese nationalism; the politics of leadership transition; and the power of the PLA.

Hidden Treasure

I think two parts of the paper deserve highlighting as valuable regardless of the overall argument.

  • In the section on “The Power of the PLA” as a causal argument for the supposed new assertiveness, Johnston provides an excellent reading of the landscape of Chinese foreign policy and PLA commentary (39–45, but especially 43–44). Johnston argues that official PLA commentary tracks over-all CPC commentary fairly closely, but that greater space for individual opinions has opened, especially for the “more nationalistic and militaristic voices.” A key assertion for those who have watched retired Chinese generals issue strident opinions in recent years is this: “[I]n the new media environment in China, these PLA authors (especially the quasi-and fully retired once) may sometimes represent only themselves.” Look at this section for a good, though by no means complete, rundown of voices out there and some of their stances over time.
  • Another nice kernel is this list of examples of Chinese behavior we might see as cooperative, rather than assertive, in 2010: “the continued growth of U.S. exports to China during the year; the continued high congruence in U.S. and Chinese voting in the UN Security Council; Chinese support for UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposed tougher sanctions on the Iranian regime—a move appreciated by the Obama administration; Beijing’s abiding by its 2009 agreement with the United States to hold talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama; a Chinese decision to continue the appreciation of the renminbi prior to the Group of Twenty meeting in Toronto in June 2010; Hu Jintao’s decision to attend the U.S.-hosted nuclear summit in April 2010 (in the wake of the January 2010 Taiwan arms sales decision, the Chinese had hinted that Hu would not attend the summit); a Chinese decision to pressure the Sudan government to exercise restraint should South Sudan declare independence, and China’s more constructive cross-strait policies, in the wake of Ma Ying-jeou’s 2008 election as president of the Republic of China…” (32–33). Phew.

A Swing and a Miss

The only response I had seen to this paper was from Daniel W. Drezner, the Tufts professor and Foreign Policy blogger. Drezner seized on passing references in Johnston’s introduction and conclusion, in which he speculates that this mistaken “new assertiveness” meme results from “a new, but poorly understood, factor in international relations—namely, the speed with which new conventional wisdoms are created, at least within the public sphere, by the interaction of the internet-based traditional media and the blogosphere” (46–47). An interesting thought.

Though Johnston marshals a few references in support of this notion, he really doesn’t make the case. As Drezner writes: “What’s ironic about this is that in the article, Johnston properly takes a lot of the conventional wisdom to task for ahistoricism and problematic causal arguments in assessing Chinese behavior after 2008.  I’d wager, however, that Johnston has done the exact same thing with respect to the foreign policy blogosphere.”

This is a fair critique, as far as the text concerned goes. At very least, if Johnston is right, he has not made a very solid case and has not provided solid comparisons with the past. But this is a bit of a sideshow, given that the speed-of-groupthink argument subsumes a total of three paragraphs out of 41 pages. I’d like to see more recent work on this point, work I’m sure is out there or in progress.

Who Should Read This

Johnston has written a rare work of international relations scholarship that can serve as a direct intervention in foreign policy discourse outside academia. Sure, a 1,500-word version might be more digestible, but general international politics readers should have no trouble following.

For U.S.–China relations scholars or practitioners, the paper is at least a required skim. For those interested in discourse on U.S.–China relations and the shape of ongoing debates, it’s a required read.

Journalists, too, should give this one a read. Just like the “rise of China,” “China’s new assertiveness” comes easily to the keyboard. It also comes out of sources’ lips frequently. This article reviews one big idea and several small ideas that deserve a follow-up or qualification.

Other References

Chestnut, Sheena and Alastair Iain Johnston. “Is China Rising?”  In Global Giants: Is China Changing the Rules of the Game?, edited by Eva Paus, Jon Western, and Penelope Prime, 237–259. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. (Updated version here.)

Drezner, Daniel W. “Are blogs to blame for Sino-American misperceptions?” Foreign Policy blog, April 17, 2013.

Disclosure

I feel compelled by the norms of journalism, though not the norms of scholarship, to note that Johnston was my professor one semester in grad school. We don’t always agree with our teachers, but they do help form our views, so take this all with whatever grain of salt you like.