China's near-seas challenges.

• Author: Erickson, Andrew S.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council forecasts that China will become the world's largest economy (measured by purchasing-power parity) in 2022. Jane's predicts that by 2015 People's Liberation Army (PLA) funding will double to $238 billion, surpassing that of NATO'S eight largest militaries after the United States combined. The International Institute for Strategic Studies says that Chinas defense spending might surpass America's as early as 2025. Even if these projections prove exaggerated, economic, technical and industrial activity of an amazing scope and intensity is already affording China potent military capabilities. This is especially the case when such capabilities are applied--most likely through peacetime deterrence, or a limited skirmish with a neighbor such as Vietnam--to the "near seas" (the Yellow, East China and South China Seas), currently a major Chinese strategic focus.

Allowing Beijing to use force, or even the threat of force, to alter the regional status quo would have a number of pernicious effects. It would undermine the functioning of the most vibrant portion of the global commons--sea and air mediums that all nations rely on for trade and prosperity, but that none own. It would undermine important international norms and encourage the application of force to more of the world's many persistent disputes. Finally, it would threaten to destabilize a region haunted by history that has prospered during nearly seven decades of U.S. forces helping to preserve peace. No other nation has the capability and lack of territorial claims necessary to play this still-vital role.

A number of strategists appear to believe that America faces the threat of conflict with China in the future, but that it can be avoided through accommodation or prepared for over a protracted period. In fact, a different scenario is more likely: even as the two Pacific powers are sufficiently interdependent to avoid direct hostilities--and share significant interests on which they may cooperate increasingly--China is already beginning to pose its greatest challenge to U.S. influence and interests in the Asia-Pacific.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs depicts a fundamental reality that is directly applicable to China's strategic priorities and efforts: basic needs must be fulfilled before higher ambitions can be pursued. From the origins of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its PLA, the party has prioritized its own leadership authority and continuity--deemed essential for China's physical integrity, stability and modernization--above all else. Before 1949, the CCP devoted itself to achieving political control over a Chinese state; no particular geographic element could trump that prerequisite.

To ensure its continued authority, the CCP relies on an extensive, elite party-state structure. The coy boasts eighty million members, roughly equivalent to Germany's population. Consider the task the Organization Department faces simply in maintaining its dossiers and presiding over its assignment. This governmental structure extends first over China's core homeland territory, which for centuries has been dominated by an overwhelming Han majority. Chinese bureaucratic governance of this area in some form or another is perhaps unmatched by any other civilization in its duration and cultural assimilative capacity; any modern Chinese government must preserve stability here to maintain both national functions and its own ethnocultural and political legitimacy. At the country's outer limits are borderlands with significant racial, linguistic and religious minorities. Vast in area, rich in resources and traditionally associated with imperial China under various arrangements sometimes more nebulous and contested than is the case today, these areas are integral parts of the Chinese state but their history can generate instability. Ensuring Beijing's control therein has entailed the expenditure of significant resources since 1949, initially in the form of "sticks"--military, paramilitary and domestic-security activities--and more recently supplemented with major "carrots" of economic development and preferential policies. While exact figures remain elusive, and metrics are fiercely contested by foreign analysts, it is widely reported that China's domestic-security budget today exceeds its military budget.

During the Cold War, China's land borders were hotly contested, and Beijing suffered disputes with nearly all of its fourteen continental neighbors. It has since reached settlements with all but two: India and Bhutan. Such settlements included major concessions on Beijing's part, particularly with Russia. Here China acted because of imperial treaty obligations, and because its leaders judged that an environment conducive to national development necessitated stable relations with its vast land neighbor. Indeed...