Helping China’s Doves

SINGAPORE — China is on the verge of destroying a geopolitical miracle. In 1980, its economy was less than one-tenth that of the United States. In 30 years, China rose to become No. 2 in the world, without disrupting the world order. Suddenly, with little warning, three decades of careful management of its external challenges have been replaced by three years of assertive and occasionally reckless actions.

This new posture partly explains an emerging Western media consensus that China has become an expansionist military power, threatening its neighbors and the world. But before this consensus is set in stone, we should remind ourselves what a large, complex society China is: Neither the country nor its government is monolithic. On a recent visit to Beijing, I saw that a lively debate is taking place among senior leaders on the strategy China should adopt as it moves toward becoming the world’s No. 1 economy.

In Western terms, there are both “hawks” and “doves” in the Chinese establishment. The hawks argue that China has been humiliated for over a century. Now that China is strong, they say, it can stand upright, and assert its case boldly, both in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea. My colleague Prof. Huang Jing at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has said that young officers of the People’s Liberation Army are leading China on a collision course with America.

“The young officers are taking control of strategy, and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s,” he said. “They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous.”

I agree. These Chinese hawks are dangerous. We can only speculate on what’s driving this aggressiveness among the officer class. Like members of other military establishments, they may have a vested interest in tension, rather than calm.

But the “doves” have not lost the debate in Beijing. Instead, they are using the current wave of criticism of China in the Western media, as well as a new Pew Research Center survey that shows the rising anxieties of China’s Asian neighbors, to remind the leadership of the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping’s advice that China adopt a low profile as it emerges as a world power.