Opposed Systems Design

The various reports spawned by the 18th Party Congress provides echoes of my meditation a few months ago about the wildly bland assertion that China's leaders are fallible. 

First, from Odd Arne Westa writing at Bloomberg:

Even within Asia, China has no overriding foreign policy framework. In conflicts over islands in the South China Sea, the government, spurred on by increasingly nationalist public opinion, appears to be guided only by the desire to secure more territory for China. The re-elected Obama Administration will find plenty of willing partners for cooperation in eastern Asia if the current Chinese attitude toward its neighbors persists.  Xi Jinping and his key foreign policy advisers understand this. Yet there are few signs that they know what to do about it. One reason is that they are personally poorly equipped to deal with foreign affairs.

Scholars sometimes argue that China’s leaders excel at foreign affairs strategy because they take the long view, while Western politicians can’t do so because they are encumbered by elections and legislatures.

This view of the Chinese leadership -- advocated in the past by Henry Kissinger -- doesn’t hold up today.

This raises a natural question - if China's leadership is so wise and takes such a long view, then how come it has squandered so much of the regional goodwill it had accumulated with its smile diplomacy strategy?  It was just five years ago that President Arroyo said, apparently without irony, that "We are happy to have China as our big brother."  At an earlier point, the American fear was that China would subtly isolate the U.S. from Asia by building a network of close relationships with its neighbors, gently but firmly displacing the U.S. as the dominant actor in the region.  Any American attempts to gain influence would appear aggressive and unwelcome, thereby furthering a Chinese narrative that the aging hegemon was turning into an irrelevant and doddering crank with a nasty streak.  But that hasn't been what has happened.

By 2010, many of China's neighbors had begun to focus more on China's bared teeth than on its smile.  The South Koreans were fuming over the DPRK's attack on Yeonpyeong Island.  China's objections to the USS George Washington participating in exercises in the international waters of the Yellow Sea did nothing to reassure its neighbors that it was force for stability in the region. Japan was unsettled by Chinese belligerence over a rogue fisherman colliding with the Japanese Coast Guard.  Despite the fisherman being in Japanese waters and ramming a Japanese vessels, the Chinese demanded an apology and compensation from the Japanese after the fisherman was returned.  While it was difficult to pin down the details, it seems that China also blocked rare earth exports to Japan during the dispute.  As a sign of how frustrated China's neighbors had become, Secretary Clinton announced at a ASEAN meeting in Hanoi that the U.S. supports a collaborative diplomatic process for resolving maritime disputes in the SCS to the approval of essentially everyone in attendance... except the Chinese.  Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that the apparently benign comments were an attack on China.

In 2011, China seemed to pull back from its aggressive behavior.

In 2012, however, tensions flared up again.  China and the Philippines squared off over Scarborough Shoals.  China and Japan squared off over the Senkakus (a.k.a. the Daiyou Islands to China).  The net result of all of this is that, once again, China's neighbors are inviting the U.S. into the region to balance China.  And what has China gained for its intransigence?  One fisherman (who would have likely been returned anyway).  This does not strike me as a track record of patient, long-term thinking.

Again, pointing out that Chinese decision-makers sometimes make self-destructive foreign policy choices is a "dog bites man" story, except for the praise that has been given Chinese leaders in the past for their strategic genius.