林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

BEIJING’S NEW GRAND STRATEGY: AN OFFENSIVE WITH EXTRA-MILITARY INSTRUMENTS

Chong-pin Lin
12/18/2006

As the United States hedges against a potential military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Beijing has opted to circumvent Washington’s preparations by adopting a grand strategy that utilizes “extra-military instruments” to gradually diminish the preponderant influence of the United States. These instruments—economic aid, cultural contributions, legal compulsion and diplomatic coercion—transcend, but certainly do not exclude the use of military force. Indeed, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is, borrowing from the PLA’s descriptions of itself, “prepared but preferably unused” (bei er bu yong), and serves as the backbone of China’s extra-military instruments. While these instruments are primarily “soft,” their effects can often be “hard,” as illustrated by Beijing’s aggressive international strangulation of Taiwan’s “lebensraum” [1]. In constructing its new grand strategy, China appears to have infused elements of realpolitik into a number of its traditional objectives, with its priorities as follows: (1) maintain domestic stability at all cost; (2) cooperate with, rather than contradict the United States; (3) assist the growth and development of China’s neighbors, assure them of their security and win their friendship (fulin mulin anlin); (4) reunify Taiwan without war, reserving the use of force as a last resort; (5) cultivate Europe and Russia to serve as counterweights to the United States; and (6) fill in the post-Cold War power vacuums in Latin America and Africa.
 


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