Why Is China Being Such a Bad Neighbour?

 

China and India have failed to negotiate a de-escalation of tensions along their common border. China is now rushing further troops to the region. No doubt India is doing the same.

In terms of their national interest, China is acting irrationally. It makes no sense to alienate all of your neighbours simultaneously. And so long as China is developing and arming faster than their neighbours, stalling war for as long as possible and reducing their neighbours’ sense of threat is their best strategic path.

Three things might cause this mad behavior. First, the government in Beijing may see things going badly domestically. They are trying to distract the population from this and get them to rally around the flag to stay in power. Foreigners in general work as a scapegoat. Second, things may be going badly enough that, behind its opaque accounting, the leadership in Beijing believes their financial situation relative to their neighbours is actually deteriorating, or is about to; they need to strike when the iron is hot. This seems to have been why Germany went to war both times in the Twentieth Century. This thesis, however, seems least probable to me. Even if things are about to go downhill, China does not look powerful enough to take on India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the USA concurrently. If they really intend to attack any one of them in order to improve their position—for example, to seize Taiwan and its assets—they should be making nice with all the others.

Here’s another thought. The CCP has worked hard to destroy all rival internal power structures. They fear any organized group might develop into an opposition to their power. They no doubt have reason to. They have cracked down hard on religious organizations of all kinds: Falun Gong, the Christians, the Muslims. They have now also begun to crack down hard on large corporations, on Jack Ma and on Everbright. But the one potential rival organization they cannot crack down on is the military. A country always needs a military, well-organized and disciplined to take orders from its officers. This is why the military is the usual source of coups in any less-developed country. There has never yet been a military coup in a Communist country, but this may have been luck. Rumour is that it was touch and go whether the government of Deng Xiaoping could rely on any unit near Beijing to suppress the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Indeed, in most revolutions, it is all over when the army turns.

It may therefore seem prudent to Xi Jinping to keep the bulk of the Red Army and its most respected or ambitious commanders occupied at the distant border. The Himalayan border with India is ideally remote in this regard. The South China Sea is a pretty good place to keep your naval commanders busy; navy revolts in port were critical in the German Weimar and the Russian revolutions.

This would explain why there are no comparable border tensions or sabre rattlings with Russia or Mongolia. Their borders are still too close to Beijing.

If this assumption is correct, the last thing China wants is a shooting war. If they lose, the loss of face might easily be enough to topple an evidently shaky government. If they win, the prestige may go to the Army or to the local commander, setting them up for a coup.

The risk is of a miscalculation. And that they are acting so recklessly suggests the current regime in Beijing is indeed very shaky.