Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [111]
Furthermore, Chinese plans to build large dams in Tibet and Yunnan to change the river courses there are coming under increasing criticism and have given rise to heated disputes over transnational water sources because, except for the Ganges, the headwaters of all the major rivers that flow into the countries of South and Southeast Asia are in China’s Himalayan region. Still, none of these disputes or even occasional armed clashes are very likely to develop into full-scale warfare between China and some other country.
He Dongsheng knew, of course, that there were elements in the military that didn’t like his views because of possible effects on their budgets. Although he didn’t agree with the tireless calls by these military interest groups for the government to increase spending on the armed forces, he was not so naïve as to imagine that a large nation could rise without the support of military power. He was a realist, and he wanted only to optimize the national interest most effectively without depending on the military to achieve the victory. To do this, it was necessary to consider grand strategy.
He believed that if a country claims the moral high ground too much, it will make other countries suspicious. In the past, when China was always proclaiming that it would never seek hegemony, and talking about its peaceful rise and a harmonious world order, did other countries believe it? This is a time when other nations worry about China, and so it is a good idea for China to make its national strategic interests perfectly clear so that others will know where to draw the line. That is why China recently put forth the idea of a Chinese Monroe Doctrine.
In the 1820s, President James Monroe announced that a rising United States didn’t intend to contend for hegemony with the great powers of Europe, but that they must not invade any part of the American continent. They especially must not try to colonize parts of Latin America again. The Americas were for the Americans—that was the Monroe Doctrine.
Now China has emulated the nineteenth-century United States and announced that it has absolutely no intention of contending with other great powers for global hegemony. But East Asia is for the East Asians, and China has invited the Euro-American great powers, primarily the United States, to leave East Asia. (What China means by East Asia also includes Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, Japan, and all the nations that were historically part of the Chinese tributary system.)
During the long period of history when a steppe civilization of northern and western Asia was continually colliding and mixing with a European civilization derived from the Mediterranean area, China was shielded behind the Gobi Desert and high mountain ranges. The self-sufficient Chinese autarchy considered itself a Tianxia or “All Under Heaven,” a world unto itself with a high level of cultural unity. Perhaps due to geographical reasons, the ancient Chinese empire didn’t have as great a penchant for foreign invasion and expansion as so many other nations over the centuries: Alexander, the Romans, Attila, the Crusaders, the Mongols, Timur, the Ottomans, Napoleon, or the European powers and Japan during the age of exploration and colonization, or the post–Cold War United States of today with its 850 military bases located all over the world.
“China,” He Dongsheng said with force and getting hoarse now, “certainly does not want to take on the arduous and thankless task of policing the world, nor does it want to govern other countries. Have you ever heard of the People’s Republic of China trying to occupy other people’s territory?”
According to his understanding, the Chinese century is not a century to be enjoyed by China only. The Chinese century means that China has finally regained the