December 04, 2014
How to Deal with Chinese Assertiveness: It's Time to Impose Costs
China’s reemergence as a wealthy and powerful nation is a fact. In recent decades its rise has been unprecedented, moving from the tenth-largest economy in 1990, to the sixth-largest economy in 2001, to the second-largest economy in 2010. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China now surpasses the United States in terms of purchasing power parity. By the same measure, China’s economy was only half the size of America’s a decade earlier, and it is this trajectory that is molding assumptions about the future regional power balance and order across the Indo-Pacific. Recent declines in growth and rising questions about future stability have yet to alter most perceptions about tomorrow’s China.
China’s deepening integration with the regional and global economy underscore the difficulty of pushing back when China transgresses rules and norms. Take the issue of infrastructure. Infrastructure will gradually redraw the strategic economic and security connectivity of the twenty-first century, and China’s infrastructure prowess has been on prominent display of late. President Xi initiated the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum with a speech touting the linear projection that China will invest some $1.25 trillion over the next decade overseas, and wants to invest $40 billion in re-establishing the old Silk Road while also building a new Maritime Silk Road. These sums are in addition to China’s proposal for a new $50 billion Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. Like the New Development Bank (previously called The BRICS Development Bank), these schemes chip away at the existing Bretton Woods international economic architecture with bodies of uncertain governance. As Indian Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman put it at a recent conference, “If Bretton Woods institutions will not provide infrastructure financing for emerging economies, then we will have to find alternatives.”
Read the full article at The National Interest.
More from CNAS
-
Assessing China’s Nuclear Decision-Making
Reports
China’s rapid nuclear buildup is raising questions about how the country makes decisions related to nuclear weapons. This policy brief analyzes that trend by presenting three ...
By Jacob Stokes
-
Articulate a Comprehensive, Coherent China Strategy
Commentary
President Trump should articulate a comprehensive, coherent China strategy that addresses U.S. objectives, the ways and means to achieve them, and how the strategy can mitigat...
By Jacob Stokes
-
Sharper: Axis of Upheaval
Commentary
A loose but growing coalition between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea demonstrates that their combined strategic interests have the potential to pose significant economic...
By Anna Pederson
-
The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana
Commentary
From Washington’s Farewell Address to Biden’s national security strategy, the core U.S. national interest, unsurprisingly, has not changed: to ensure the fundamental security ...
By Richard Fontaine & Robert Blackwill
