Neg China Reaction da 1NC

Impact Extensions

Representations are key in the context of China—they deeply shape our policies and Chinese reactions

Goh 05

(Evelyn, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961-1974: From 'Red Menace' to 'Tacit Ally', p. 6-9, DB)

The alternative questions posed in this study may be recognized as the "how possible" queries emphasized by constructivists, in contrast [end page 6] to the basic "why" questions that realists try to answer. 16 Constructivist approaches prioritize ideas and identity in the creation of state interests because they work from the basis that all reality is socially constructed. 17 The international system, for instance, does not exert an automatic "objective" causal influence on states' actions. Rather, state policy choices result from a process of perception and interpretation by state actors, through which they come to understand the situation that the state faces and to formulate their responses. Furthermore, actors may, by their actions, alter systemic structures and trends. 18 Even beyond that, some constructivists argue that actors themselves change as they evolve new ideas and conceptions about identity and political communities. Thus, the constructivist understanding of "reality" centers upon the interaction of the material and the ideational. 19 The forging of this intersubjective context is a contentious process, but often particular representations are so successful that they become a form of "common sense," encompassing a system of understanding about a body of subjects, objects, and issues with implicit policy consequences. This structure of representation may be termed a discourse, and a radical change in policy occurs when the prevailing discourse is challenged and altered. The key conceptual focus in this study is on discourses, rather than on ideas, belief systems, or ideology, because the former conveys more effectively the multifaceted process by which meaning is constituted by policy actors and by which policy choices are constructed, contested, and implemented. Discourses may be understood as linguistic representations and rhetorical strategies by which a people create meaning about the world, and they are critical to the process by which ideas are translated into [end page 7] policy in two ways. 20 First, they perform a constraining or enabling function with regard to state action, in the sense that policy options may be rendered more or less reasonable by particular understandings of, for instance, China, the United States, and the relations between them. 21 Second, discursive practice is an integral element of sociopolitical relations of power. 22 As a key means of producing the categories and boundaries of knowledge by which reality is understood and explained by society, discourses are often deliberate and instrumental. In representing subjects and their relationships in certain ways, political actors have particular objectives and specific audiences in mind. Here, the focus on changing discursive representations of China and China policy in official American circles allows us to study in particular the policy advocacy process – within internal official circles, to the public, and to the other party in the bilateral relationship – in a significant policy reversal. Bringing to bear the understanding that the creation of meaning by discursive practice is an essential means of influencing political action, this book investigates the contested process by which the different actors and parties defined and redefined identities, generated new knowledge, and created new meanings in order to construct and maintain a new U.S.-China relationship. In this study, each discourse about China may be understood to encompass the following elements: an image or representation of China; a related representation of U.S. identity; an interpretation of the nature of U.S.-China relations; and the "logical" policy options that flow from these representations. For ease of reference, each subdiscourse that is identified here is centered upon the core image of China upon which it is built. An image is simply the perception of a particular object or subject, the normative [end page 8] evaluation of it, and the identity and meaning ascribed to it. 23 The concept of images is employed here mainly as an analytical shorthand, as the image is but one of four subcomponents of each discourse. 24

China is very sensitive to threat discourse—representations uniquely shape reality in this context

Krolikowski 08

(Alanna, doctoral student in International Relations at the Department of Political Science of University of Toronto, MA in International Relations at the Munk Centre for International Relations of the University of Toronto; “State Personhood in Ontological Security Theories of International Relations and Chinese Nationalism: A Sceptical View.” http://www.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/Krolikowski_2008.pdf)

This inconsistency between China’s putative maladapted type and its conduct toward other actors is further indicated by changes to China’s self-representations or, in other words, to the discourses through which China describes and explains itself and its circumstances to other actors. Returning to Giddens’s formulation of ontological security, we are reminded that an important component of actors’ behaviour in the high modern period is the capacity to reflexively self-monitor and engage in reconstructions, re-orderings and developments of their “biographical” narratives, including of their relationships to others.53 While these means of producing and reproducing self-identity and identification are typical of individuals in our epoch, healthy basic trust is a precondition for them: actors with low basic trust are unable to engage in this type of self-identity development.54 For Giddens, this inability is a form of neurosis, which often leaves individuals paralysed by and entrapped within their identity-affirming routines. Extending the analogy with the individual, we should expect that states with rigid basic trust will not be able to engage in this type of reflexive self-identity change. China, however, provides one of the most striking examples of a state’s deliberate attempt at changing its self-identity and its relationships of identification with other states. Yong Deng, for instance, describes at length the processes by which China has endeavoured to counter “China Threat theory” by articulating alternative representations of its identity, reputation and role in the international system.55 China threat theory refers to “foreign attributions to China of a harmful, destabilizing, and even pernicious international reputation.”56 According to Deng, Beijing has taken stock of realist theories of international relations which posit the tragedy of the security dilemma and, specifically, of realist theories that emphasize the probability of war occurring when rising powers challenge established hegemons.57 China is thus aware of the security dilemma that it will confront “if its threat image abroad and material capabilities grow simultaneously.” 58 Citing suggestive findings from the literature on the democratic peace and on security communities, Deng notes that one process through which threat image can be altered or overcome is social identification.59 States that identify with each other are less likely to perceive each other as threatening and are therefore less susceptible to the constraining effects of the security dilemma, while the opposite is true for states that do not share any sense of identification. This type of consideration lies at the source of Beijing’s hypersensitivity regarding China threat theory and its consistent efforts to contest and undermine it.60 China’s “strategy” for reducing the influence of China threat theory includes several representational and other tactics. Probably chief among these is equating China threat theory with an outdated “mentality of Cold War-style power politics” and advocating that great powers take a less alarmist approach more suited to current realities in statements to external audiences.61 A second tack involves repeatedly offering reassurances to foreign listeners of China’s peaceful intentions and its satisfaction with the status quo world order.62 The clearest example of this type of representation is found in Beijing’s “peaceful rise” discourse, a series of pronouncements about the uniqueness of the phenomenon of the growth of China’s influence over global economic and political processes that serves specifically to differentiate China from earlier rising powers that provoked wars.63 In a survey of official “assessments and policy designs” since the late 1990s, Jing Huang finds that this discourse is indicative of a new understanding of the international environment and concludes that it is supported by substantial changes to China’s practices, which show a more actively engaged, “cooperative and patient” China.64 Deng and Huang’s accounts of Beijing’s strategies find support in Chih-yu Shih’s analysis of Chinese academic responses to China threat theory, in which he finds that “the introduction of IR theories to China one after another – first realism, then liberalism and most recently constructivism – has directly affected how Chinese represent themselves, internally as well as externally.”65 Shih argues that “the self-representation of China in terms of ‘peaceful rise’ suggests the influence of liberal theory and ideology as an alternative to realism” in Chinese thought.66

Images of threats reinforce the security dilemma between states and breed mutual antagonisms that make threat-thinking self-fulfilling prophecies. Their construction of threats is based upon the grip of expert discourses that blind us to alternative views of reality—refusing this hegemony is a transformative act.

Foster 94

(Gregory, Professor at the National Defense University, Alternatives, v. 19 n.1 p. 86-88)

By ridding oneself of the many bad habits of English usage we have adopted, one can think more clearly, Threattalk becomes threatthink. The resultant paranoia and intolerance invariably blind us to emerging developments and conditions that truly threaten our well-being but fall outside the bounds of our distorted perception. This brings us to a second fundamental issue: the effect our image of threat has on reality. The late Kenneth Boulding made the astute observation that there is a reciprocal, escalatory dynamic associated with threat imagery. For example, Country A, feeling itself threatened (however and for whatever reasons) by Country B, increases its armaments to reduce its insecurity. This makes B feel threatened, and so B increases its armaments to bolster its security. This makes A feel even more threatened, so A again increases its armaments. This growing threat “forces” B to further increase its armaments. And so on until either war breaks out or some other change (such as internal economic collapse) reverses the process. This is how threatthink becomes threat. If there is a single, documentable truth to be derived from an assessment of threat-based thinking, it is that the perception of threat—at least where that threat has a human component—almost invariably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For this reason alone—the fact that we have shown ourselves perversely capable of creating unwanted inevitability—we must face up to a third fundamental issue: the more general failure of our overall approach to envisioning the future. Most of us justifiably consider ourselves unqualified to divine the future. We therefore typically defer to experts and authorities—futurists and assorted government technocrats presumably possessed of special powers or information the rest of us do not have—who end up thereby dictating not only our future but our present as well. These are the individuals who tell us not only that there are threats, but what they are and how we must deal with them. What we refuse to recognize is that the future these purported visionaries are able to see is invariably nothing more imaginative than a simple projection of what already is happening. It also is an assured way for them to solidify and perpetuate their own power over us. The future they see, because the rest of us accept it on authority as all but inevitable, closes out any perceived need to pursue other potentially fruitful possibilities; it provides an excuse for ignoring present needs that, if fulfilled, might well produce a markedly different future; it ensures nothing more enlightened or progressive than creeping incrementalism and evolutionary drift; it creates false expectations about what can and will be; and when it fails to materialize—as it so often does because of the unexpected—it produces feelings of helplessness, not among the purveyors of the deception, but amoung those of us who have so carelessly relinquished our fate to them.

There has always been a China security threat—these perceptions are created by the US military-industrial complex. Our institutions need enemies to survive, and China fits the bill—this cycle of enemy creation necessitates the sacrificial destruction of millions.

Clark 06

(Gregory, vice president of Akita International University and a former Australian diplomat. “No Rest for 'China Threat' Lobby”, Japan Times, Jan. 7, 2006, http://taiwansecurity.org/News/2006/JT-070106.htm).

For as long as I have been in the China-watching business (more than 40 years now), there has always been a China "threat." It began with the 1950-53 Korean civil war, which initially had nothing to do with China. Even so, Beijing was blamed and, as punishment, the United States decided to intervene not only in Korea but also in China's civil war with Taiwan, and later threaten a move against China by sending troops close to China's borders with Korea. When China reacted to that move by sending in its own troops, the China-threat people moved into high gear. The next China threat was supposed to operate via the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Coping with it meant the West had to prop up a range of incompetent, corrupt rulers in the area, and intervene cruelly to suppress revolts by local Chinese against discrimination in Malaya and then in Sarawak. It also meant that the U.S., Britain and Australia had to work very hard and covertly to prevent the 1959 election of an intelligent Chinese, Lee Kwan Yew, to the Singapore premiership. Lee was then seen, amazingly, as a front for those dreaded Chinese Communists. The China-threat lobby moved into overdrive over Vietnam in the early 1960s. There a clearly nationalist-inspired civil war supported more by Moscow than by Beijing was denounced by Washington and Canberra as the first step in planned Chinese "aggression" into Asia. In Moscow in 1964, I had to accompany an Australian foreign minister, Paul Hasluck, in a foolish, U.S.-instigated bid to persuade the Soviet Union to side with the West against those aggressive Chinese. Hasluck gave up only after a bemused Soviet prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, told him point-blank that Moscow was doing all it could to help North Vietnam, would continue to give help, and that it would like to see Beijing doing a lot more. In 1962, as China desk officer in Canberra, I had to witness an extraordinary attempt to label as unprovoked aggression a very limited and justified Chinese counterattack against an Indian military thrust across the Indian-claimed border line in the North East Frontier Area. Threat scenarios then had China seeking ocean access via the Bay of Bengal. The London Economist even had Beijing seeking to move south via Afghanistan. Then came the allegations that China was seeking footholds in Laos, northern Thailand and Myanmar -- all false. U.S., British and Australian encouragement for the 1965 massacre of half a million leftwing supporters in Indonesia was also justified as needed to prevent China from gaining a foothold there. So too was the U.S. and Australia's 1975 approval for Indonesia's brutal takeover of East Timor. Since then we have seen Beijing's claims against Taiwan condemned as aggressive, despite the fact that every Western nation, including the U.S., has formally recognized or accepted China's claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. China's efforts to assert control over Tibet are also branded as aggression even though Tibet has never been recognized as an independent entity. And so it continues to the present day. With the alleged Soviet threat to Japan having evaporated, we now have an army of Japanese and U.S. hawks -- Foreign Minister Aso included -- ramping up China as an alleged threat to Japan and the Far East. Much is made of Beijing's recent increases in military spending. But those increases began from a very low level; until recently its military were more concerned with running companies and growing their own vegetables. And Beijing faces a U.S.-Japan military buildup in East Asia that is avowedly anti-China and that spends a lot more than China does. Of course, if the Chinese military were placing bases and sending spy planes and ships close to the U.S. coast, and were bombing U.S. embassies, the U.S. role in that buildup might be justified. But so far that has not happened. Tokyo's claims to be threatened by China in the East China Sea are equally dubious. So far, the only shots fired in anger in that area have been Japan's, in a legally dubious huntdown and sinking of a North Korean vessel. Tokyo makes much of China's challenge to Japan's claimed EEZ (exclusive economic zone) median line of control in the East China Sea (Beijing says the EEZ border should be based on the continental shelf extending close to the Ryukyu islands and proposes joint development between the two claim lines). But international law on EEZ borders still does not firmly support Japan's median line position. And the recent Australia-East Timor agreement on joint development of continental shelf oil/gas resources in the Timor Sea, and the 1974 Japan-South Korean agreement for joint development in the East China Sea continental shelf, both strongly suggest that Beijing's joint development proposal is not entirely unreasonable. But no doubt these details will be dismissed as irrelevant. Our powers-that-be need threats to justify their existence. As we saw during the Cold War, and more recently over Iraq, once they declare that such and such a nation is a threat, it becomes impossible to stop the escalation. The other side naturally has to show some reaction. The military-industrial- intelligence complex then seize on this as the pretext further to expand budgets and power. Before long the media and a raft of dubious academic and other commentators are sucked into the vortex. Then when it is all over and the alleged threat has proved to be quite imaginary, the threat merchants move on to find another target. But not before billions have been spent. And millions have died.

The affirmative’s construction of WMD threats is part of a cycle of otherness used to justify state intervention.

Lipschutz 00

(Ronnie, professor of politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, 2000, After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century , p. 49)

How and where do discourses of threat and security originate? Barry Buzan (1991:37) has pointed out that “There is a cruel irony in [one] meaning of secure which is ‘unable to escape’.” To secure onself is, therefore, a sort of trap, for one can never leave a secure place without incurring risks. Moreover, security appears to be meaningless either as concept or practice without an “Other” to help specify the conditions of insecurity that must be guarded against. James Der Derian (1995), citing Nietzsche, points out that this “Other” is made manifest through differences that create terror and collective resentment of difference—leading to a state of fear—rather than a coming to terms with the positive potentials of difference. As these differences become less than convincing, or fail to be made manifest, however, their power to create fear and terror diminish, and so it becomes necessary to discover even more menacing threats to reestablish difference. For this purpose, reality may no longer suffice. What is substituted, instead, is a dangerous world of imagined threats. Not imaginary threats, but threats conjured up as things that could happen. Paradoxically, then, it becomes the imagined, unnamed party, with the clandestinely assembled and crude atomic device, and not the thousands of reliable, high-yield warheads mounted on missiles poised to launch at a moment’s notice, that is used to create fear, terror, and calls for action. It is the speculation about mysterious actors behind blown up buildings and fallen jetliners, and not rather banal defects in wiring and fuel tanks, that creates the atmosphere for greater surveillance and control. It is suspicion of neighbors, thought to be engaged in subversive or surreptitious behaviors, listening to lewd lyrics or logged-on to lascivious Web pages, and not concerns about inner-city health and welfare, that brings calls for state intervention.