Neg China Reaction da 1NC

AT: Threats Real

Chinese threat literature is an exercise in the construction of US identity—not “true” statements about China.

Pan 04

(Chengxin, Professor of Political Science at Australian National University, “The ‘China Threat’ in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics”, Alternatives, June-July)

Instead, China as a "threat" has much to do with the particular mode of U.S. self-imagination. As Steve Chan notes: China is an object of attention not only because of its huge size, ancient legacy, or current or projected relative national power. . . . The importance of China has to do with perceptions, especially those regarding the potential that Beijing will become an example, source, or model that contradicts Western liberalism as the reigning paradigm. In an era of supposed universalizing cosmopolitanism, China demonstrates the potency and persistence of nationalism, and embodies an alternative to Western and especially U.S. conceptions of democracy and capitalism. China is a reminder that history is not close to an Certainly, I do not deny China's potential for strategic misbehavior in the global context, nor do I claim the "essential peacefulness" of Chinese culture." Having said that, my main point here is that there is no such thing as "Chinese reality" that can automatically speak for itself, for example, as a "threat." Rather, the "China threat" is essentially a specifically social meaning given to China by its U.S. observers, a meaning that cannot be disconnected from the dominant U.S. self-construction. Thus, to fully understand the U.S. "China threat" argument, it is essential to recognize its autobiographical nature. Indeed, the construction of other is not only a product of U.S. self-imagination, but often a necessary foil to it. For example, by taking this representation of China as Chinese reality per se, those scholars are able to assert their self-identity as "mature," "rational" realists capable of knowing the "hard facts" of international politics, in distinction from those "idealists" whose views are said to be grounded more in "an article of faith" than in "historical experience."41 On the other hand, given that history is apparently not "progressively" linear, the invocation of a certain other not only helps explain away such historical uncertainties or "anomalies" and maintain the credibility of the allegedly universal path trodden by the United States, but also serves to highlight U.S. "indispensability." As Samuel Huntington puts it, "If being an American means being committed to the principles of liberty, democracy, individualism, and private property, and if there is no evil empire out there threatening those principles, what indeed does it mean to be an American, and what becomes of American national interests?" In this way, it seems that the constructions of the particular U.S. self and its other are always intertwined and mutually reinforcing.

China is not a threat even by realist standards

Ye 02

(Jiang, Visiting Professor at College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, Professor, Humanity College, Shanghai Normal University, China; Will China be a “Threat” to Its Neighbors and the World in the Twenty First Century?, http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/cg/ir/college/bulletin/e-vol1/1-4jiang.pdf)

Realist Perspectives on the Issue of “China Threat” The above comments on the theory of “China threat” are made through liberal IR theories such as the theory of globalization analyzed by liberal IR scholars. Needlessly to say, it is mainly the realist IR theory that helps Western analysts to argue about the “China threat”. As well known, power politics is the basis of realist IR theory. For realists international relations are best understood by focusing on the distribution of power among states, because relations among states take place in the absence of a world government, which means that the international system is anarchical. According to those who have argued that China has been or will be the “threat,” it is mainly because China’s national power has been increased recently that the international power structure has undergone great changes, which will lead China to be a “threat” to its neighbors in the region and to the world at large. But even if we agree with the method of realist argument, we still need to ask a key question-whether China’s national power has really increased to such an extent that it will threaten the security of the region and even that of the world. Power is hard to measure because it is hard to create a formula that allocates realistic relative weights to military might, economic capacity, leadership capability and other factors in the power equation. On the other hand power is constantly in flux which means power is dynamic. In order to create a framework to measure power according to its characteristics, most IR scholars tend to agree that when we measure any state’s power it should be divided into two types, one is “hard power” or “coercive power” and the other is “soft power” or “persuasive power”. Any state’s military, economic and other assets contribute to “hard power” which traditionally can make another countries to do or not do something. The assets as moral authority or technological excellence that enhance a country’s image of leadership contribute to “soft power”. With the division of the two types of power in mind, let us measure whether China’s power has been great enough to be a threat in a realistic way. As anyone agrees, China is a rising power. From 1979 to 1997 China’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 9.8% and even against the background of Southeast Asia financial crisis, China’s GDP grew at 7.8% in 1998 and even above 8% in 1999. From 2000 China’s real GDP began to exceed US$1,000 billion.15 According to Chinese official data that China’s 2001 real GDP has reached 9,593.3 billion Chinese Yuan which almost equals to US$1.16 trillion.16 China’s GDP is now the seventh largest in the world and mainland China (except Hong Kong) is now the tenth-ranked international trader. China’s foreign currency reserve is the second largest in the world after Japan. Yet, if we read all these numbers against the background of China’s huge population the picture will be quite different. China’s population has already exceeded 1.3 billion, which means that China’s real per capita GDP is only 7379.46 Chinese Yuan or less than US$1,000. Even according to CIA’s questionable PPP (purchasing power parity) estimation, Chinese per capita GDP is US$3,600, much lower than the world average US$7,200, and ranked at 133th.17 With such low per capita GDP China at best can be ranked as a median ranged power that Gerald Segal described in his article, “Does China Matter? ” in Foreign Affairs in 1999.18 Just as China’s per capita GDP shows that China’s hard power is not as strong as those who argue about the “China threat” have imagined, China’s real military power, which is the core of hard power, remains a second-rate power. According to China’s official announcement that from this fiscal year 2002-2003, China’s defense spending will have a 17.6 percent increase. Actually China has already raised its military budget by one-third over the course of the last two years. But considering the gap between China’s US$20 billion defense budget and the US defense budget of about US$ 400 billion, or even the disparity between China’s defense budget and the Japan’s US$40.77 billion defense budget, China’s military power should be considered very limited, to say nothing of the immense and growing technological gap between China and the U.S. or Japan. Just as former US assistant secretary of defense Lawrence J. Korb expressed in a recent article: “China is not, and is extremely unlikely to be, a strategic military threat the way the Soviet Union once was.” 19 Some Western sources and analysts prefer to estimate China’s defense budget much bigger than China’s officially announced figure. The estimation by CIA of China’s defense budget put it in the range from $45 billion to $65 billion for 2002, which still shows a big gap between China and the U.S. in military spending. If we use the per capita defense expenditure index, the gap between China, the U.S. and Japan will be huge. While China’s hard power is essentially quite limited, its soft power is probably facing more serious challenge. For any state the core of the soft power may be the governing capacity-the capability of the government to mobilize political support, to provide public goods and to manage internal tensions. As we know, it is the policy of reform and opening to the world that has made possible the resent economic progresses in China such as consistently high growth rates, recent entry into the WTO, and the huge amount of foreign direct investment (US$46 billion in 2001). At the same time, globalization has also brought about dramatic transformation in China’s economic, social, and to some extent political systems. During the transition period that began in the early 1980s, the Chinese government has faced and is still facing very series challenges to its governing capacity. There is no denying the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor in Chinese society has been widened tremendously as the economic reform has deepened. More than twenty years of pro-market reforms have produced a small number of millionaires and billionaires in China and a much larger number of impoverished people-the losers from reform. The urban unemployment rate is roughly around 10% while the unemployment and underemployment in rural areas are even more substantial. With limited revenue the state is unable to provide assistance to the weak groups in society created in the process of the reform. What makes the situation more grave is that the corruption is widespread, as some of the ruling elite converted their public political power into private economic gains, building and profiting from patronage machines during the process of the economic reform, while the number of the poor people multiplied. All of these have undermined the political support to the government, although the Chinese government has tried to persuade the Chinese people to believe that the government would do its best to fight against corruption and help those week groups by executing some corruptive officials and by reforming the social security system. Although Chinese government has made tremendous efforts to provide enough public goods such as education, public health, law and order while promoting the reform and opening to the world, its recent performance still lags behind that of many developing countries. For a considerable period China’s education spending has been around 2.5 percent of its GDP22, below the average of 3.4 percent for most developing countries. China’s public health-care system has also been lagging behind many developing countries. According to the World Health Organization, China’s health system ranked 144th in the world, placing it among the bottom quartile of WHO members, behind India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.23 Because the capabilities of the Chinese government to mobilize political support and to provide public goods have been weakened, the government’s capability to manage the internal tensions also faces a great challenge, which has led some western scholars to argue that China is facing a hidden crisis of governance.24 The argument that China is facing a hidden crisis of governance needs to be made with stronger evidence and systematic theoretical analysis. One thing seems clear: even from a realist perspective, China’s soft power is almost the same as its hard power, that is, far from strong enough to “threaten” its neighbors and the world. Actually it is Chinese ruling elites themselves who are more aware of China’s realities in terms of both hard power and soft power, especially during the period of its leadership succession. The pervasive propaganda of the “Three Represents” theory25 demonstrates that the top ruling elites are deeply concerned about the legitimacy of the ruling Party-CPC and are really worried about the government’s capability of governance. At the same time the official acceptance of the inevitable trend of globalization and the willingness of moving along in harmony with globalization indicates that Chinese elites are keenly aware of the relative weakness of China’s power and the absolute necessity of cooperating with other countries in the international systems formed by the force of globalization.

China is peacefully integrating into the world system—self-interest motivates international cooperation

Ye 02

(Jiang, Visiting Professor at College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, Professor, Humanity College, Shanghai Normal University, China; Will China be a “Threat” to Its Neighbors and the World in the Twenty First Century?, http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/cg/ir/college/bulletin/e-vol1/1-4jiang.pdf)

No doubt, globalization has led the integration and the interdependence of all the actors in the international system to an unprecedented degree and the cooperative attitude of the state-still the main actor in the international system. Importantly, China as a rising power seems to be orienting itself much more than the established powers towards cooperation, because it perceives that the political authority of the states in the contemporary international system is in decline. For example, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji went to Washington to discuss China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, in April 1999 when NATO led by the United States was conducting air strikes against Yugoslavia, which China did not support and during which Chinese Embassy was hit by U.S. missiles. Obviously, the Chinese premier’s visit reflected the tremendous change in Chinese attitude toward the international system. Unlike Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century or Japan in the period between the two world wars, China as a rising power prefers to merge into the international cooperative regimes like WTO and tries its best to cooperate with the established powers and follow the international norms and rules. The behavioral change of the rising power is caused by the changes in the international system. In the traditional international system dominated by power politics the level of integration and interdependence was very low because there were no efficient international organizations such as WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc, nor were there any orientation towards cooperation for both the established or the rising powers. While in the contemporary international system pushed by the force of globalization both established powers and rising powers are willing to cooperate with each other. With the behavioral changes of the actors in the contemporary international system in mind, it will be easier for us to find the flaws in the arguments about China threat. The Chinese official attitude towards the phenomenon of globalization can also help us to see how the structural change of the international system since the end of the Cold War has influenced the rising power itself. According to China’s official statement, economic globalization is an inevitable trend of the economic development of the contemporary world. The Chinese government openly admits that “since the beginning of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, science and technology have developed rapidly and transnational companies have continued their expansion. The globalization process has obviously sped up, with conspicuous expressions found in the accelerated flow and disposition of production factors in the global sphere, the deepening of mutual influence of the economies in various countries and the strengthening of interlinks.” 8 With the guidance of such a new ideology that moved away from orthodox Marxism, China has adjusted its attitude toward the world economic system from self-reliance to cooperation. China has already become a member of the IMF, the World Bank, and other international economic institutions and has been very active in those institutions that it once condemned as tools of capitalist imperialism. In December 2001 Chinese government proudly declared to the world that China had become the member of the WTO after long negotiations with United States and the European Union. All these actions exhibit clearly the willingness of the Chinese government to integrate China into the world market system and catch up with the quick pace of globalization. This is in sharp contrast with the actions of Germany and Japan in the period between the two world wars. Germany and Japan carried out autarkic economic policies in the 1930s, which led them to leave the world market and caused them to confront the established powers like Great Britain and United States. In contrast China has not only shifted its attitude towards the world market from self-reliance to cooperation but also has been taking a more active role in those international economic regimes. One of the main reasons why China as a rising power has not followed the examples of Germany and Japan in the 1930s is that the international system has changed. All states-the main international actors-operate in the international social-economic-political geographic environment and the specific characteristics of the international system help determine the pattern of the behaviors and intentions of the states. In the traditional power politic international system before World War Two there were few international cooperation regimes to regulate the behavior of the actors and the space for the rising powers was so narrow that the main method for them to further their national interests was to concur and conflict with the existed powers. While under the development of globalization the international cooperation regimes are playing more and more important roles in the present international system and it will be more difficult for the rising power to further its national interests without cooperation with other powers within those regimes. That is why China has tried and is still trying its best to join and to act positively in the international organizations such as UN, WTO, IMF, and so on. China’s engagement with the world market and the multilateral international economic organizations is companied by its involvement in international and regional security institutions. The past few years have already seen the increasing interests and willingness of China to embrace the multilateral security mechanism, including its engagement with ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The ARF was initially established as a partial response to the territorial disputes (South China Sea) with China and the concerns of US military readjustment in East Asia after the Cold War. China’s engagement with ARF, the regional multilateral security institution, has been widely recognized as a significant contributing element to encourage the development of features of inclusive nature of multilateralism. China’s participation in the security institutions9 shows that in the globalized international system self-interested actors prefer to construct institutions to enhance cooperation on security issues. Perhaps the adjustment of China’s behavior came from its anticipation of other states’ preference for cooperation within international security institutions, or from the institutions’ monitoring and sanctioning provision. But the fact remains that China is experiencing a kind of socialization under the international security institutions. It is worth noting that China’s confidence and further interest in deeper and broader participation in the regional security regimes improve its cooperation quality in reinforcing the process of norm diffusion. With all of these in mind, one must be very cautious when arguing about the China threat in the new century. It is quite common for Western IR scholars to argue that Chinese history and its domestic affairs cause China to prefer assertiveness strategy that will lead to China’s threat to the region and to the world. But a deep appreciation of Chinese history and its culture would tell one that such argument is lopsided if not prejudiced. The Chinese are proud of their culture and long history, and the traditional Confucian ideology of “restraining oneself and restoring the ritual to the world” has taught the Chinese not to impose its culture or world view upon others. Traditionally, Chinese elites would rather lead by example than by forceful conversion when China was a dominant power in the region in premodern times. Even when communist ideology prevailed and China’s foreign policy contained an element of exporting revolution, China was much less active than was the Soviet Union in trying to convert others. This is not to say that there have never been any assertive or aggressive elements in Chinese foreign policy. The point is that under the strong influence of Confucian tradition China has been modeled and cultivated to be reactive rather than aggressive. While there were assertive and aggressive elements in terms of military action on the part of China in pre-modern times, many Western scholars have pointed out that historically Chinese military action has been defensive or punitive in nature and seldom imperialistic. Even the late Gerald Segal, a prominent western scholar for Chinese studies who was not so friendly to China, also conceded the same point in his book Defending China.10 From a Chinese perspective, military force is only used for domestic stability as in the case of Tibet and Taiwan or for national defense as in the case of Korea, India, and Vietnam.11 The traditional Confucian doctrine of “mean and mediocre” has helped the Chinese to adjust itself with ease in the transition from the great power politics to the current international politics that places emphasis on multilateralism and interdependence with the backdrop of globalization. Since the People’s Republic of China was founded, the pillar of China’s foreign policy has been the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” laid out by the late Premier Zhou Enlai. Although Chinese behavior in the international community during the Mao era often contradicted the “Five Principles” to some extent12, such a contradiction has largely disappeared since the 1980s when Deng Xiaoping began to change Mao’s revolutionary ideology and initiated the policy of reforming and opening up to the world. With considerable speed the Chinese economy has been moving into global capitalist market system while extensive economic and cultural ties have already developed between China and the rest of the world especially between China and the West. It has been estimated that since the beginning of the 1990s’ as much as 20-40 percent of China’s gross national product has come from foreign trade.13 This certainly will lead China to persist in the policy of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in dealing with any other countries, especially with its neighbor countries such as Japan and its main trade partners like USA. A breakdown of the relationships across the Pacific would be disastrous for China. Roughly 35 percent of China’s exports go to the United States. Moreover two of its most important trading partners, Japan and South Korea, also depend on their ability to export to the American market.14 It is hard to imagine that China will be able to make any profit by de-stabilizing the stability of the Pacific region or by stirring up trouble with United States.

China’s rise is peaceful

Xiao 10

(Ren, Professor of International Politics at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, Acting Director and Senior Fellow at the Department of American Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, "The International Relations Theoretical Discourse in China: One World, Different Explanations", Journal of Chinese Political Science, Vol. 15, Issue 1, March 2010, July 21st 2010, p. 18, DOI 10.1007/s11366-009-9084-4)

The above words are a discussion about China’s distinctive international relations discourse. The Chinese viewpoints have changed over the years, sometimes because the leadership changed, sometimes due to a change in the international environment, and sometimes because the leaders’ thinking about the international environment changed, even though the environment did not change much.24 Some changes were fundamental such as that in China’s identification of current era from “war and revolution” to “peace and development.” The latter’s role in Chinese foreign policy making can never be overestimated. However, in the reform and opening years, continuation is clearly the major aspect of the Chinese foreign policy thinking. Over the past three decades, China has adopted its own “independent and peace-oriented foreign policy.” From China’s perspective, independence means that China does not simply follow others. Rather, it has its own views of the world and its own principles about international and regional disputes, and it makes objective and fair-minded judgments according to the rights and wrongs of the matter itself. Peace-oriented diplomacy means any diplomatic action has to be in favor of world peace, since development can only be achieved in a peaceful environment. And a crucial part of Chinese foreign relations is good neighbor policy, which seeks to actively develop relations with the neighboring countries.25 In addition, a core foreign policy is that China neither attaches itself to any great power or power group, nor yields to any great power’s pressure, and does not ally with any great power. This is a conclusion reached after China has summed up its experience over the past decades, and has become a long-term policy. Thus, IR theoretical discourse in China is inseparable from this “independent and peace-oriented foreign policy.” In other words, the theories are a logical result of China’s carrying out an independent foreign policy. Along with the rise of China’s international status, the possibility for China’s ideas to be accepted by others is also growing. For instance, “multipolarization” which China espouses and encourages, has been written down in the Sino-Russian Joint Communiqué on World Multipolarization and the Establishment of New International Order in April 1997, and later in the Sino-French Joint Communiqué in May 1997. The latter states that “the two sides decide to closely cooperate further and enhance the world multipolarization process, ...[and] oppose any attempt to dominate in international affairs in order to achieve a more prosperous, stable, secure, and balanced world.” China’s rich historical and cultural tradition, plus its varied foreign policy practice, breeds its own diplomatic thoughts and theoretical discourse. In addition to this analysis, substantial work remains to be done in the future.

The claim isn’t that the material reality conditions that create “threats” don’t exist—it’s that the meaning of those material conditions are molded in discourse, and that saying that some are threatening while others are not is entirely constructed and can be changed on a discursive level.

Weldes 99

(Jutta, professor of international relations at the University of Bristol, 1999, Cultures of Insecurity, p. 12-13)

At this point it is important to clarify what we mean in referring to insecurities as social constructions, in order to preempt objections that some readers may have. Critics of constructivism sometimes understand a phrase such as, for example, “the social construction of the Soviet threat” (e.g., Nathanson, 1988) to mean that the Soviet threat did not in fact exist, that it was purely a fabrication. However, to refer to something as socially constructed is not at all the same as saying that it does not exist. A brief discussion of the example of nuclear insecurity may help define the distinctive nature of a constructivist perspective in security studies. Our constructivism would not deny that nuclear weapons exist, that their use could maim and kill millions of people, and that a number of states possess a nuclear capability (including the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan, at least). On this a constructivist and the most empiricist arms-control experts can agree. However, our constructivism is interested in how one gets from here to such widely shared propositions as these: that the United States is threatened by Russian, but not by British, nuclear weapons; that Third World states are more likely to use their nuclear weapons than Western countries; that Iraq’s nuclear potential is more threatening than the United States’ nuclear arsenal; and that the United States is safer with nuclear weapons than it would be without them. In the face of the heterogeneous dangers represented by nuclear weapons, there is nonetheless an established common sense, made real in collective discourse, that foregrounds some dangers while repressing or ignoring others so that, for example, Americans are likely to be more afraid of Pakistani than of British nuclear weapons, although neither have ever been used. It is this discursive constitution of the threat represented by nuclear weapons that we refer to as “construction,” and it means not that the weapons have been made up but that their meaning has been molded in discourse. As the nuclear example immediately makes clear, these are not simply academic issues without significance in the “real world.” It matters deeply for a host of social relations whether one is more afraid of, say, an Iraqi or Swedish bomb, of carcinogens produced at the Rocky Flats plutonium plant or of a Russian first strike. Although conventional approaches in security studies might produce claims of a clear answer to such questions, a critical constructivist analysis works more deconstructively, producing not simple answers but forms of analysis that show how such answers become, in Roland Barthes’s phrase, “falsely obvious” (1972: 11).

Even if threats are real, the question of how we choose to frame and react to them is crucial.

Tuathail 01

(Gearóid Ó, Professor of Government and International Affairs and Director of the Masters of Public and International Affairs program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, "Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society", Geopolitics, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 22, Issue 2/3, 2001, July 16th 2010, p. 12.

None of this is to suggest that so-called "rogue states' are not threats that sometimes require resolute international response. Rather, it is to challenge the ways in which the threat is represented as a territorial threat 'out there' from 'non-Western others' rather than as a pervasive threat from our very own techno-scientific modernity. Behind the territorializing of global risks in 'rogue stales' is a broader geopolitical question that is central to geopolitics today and likely to remain so into the twenty-first century: how does the West respond to the inevitable diffusion of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, techno-scientific capabilities pioneered by superpower military-industrial complexes, to developing states, to rogue stales and even to failing states? Put differently, how is the Enlightenment West going to deal with the diffusion of its most deadly weapons, substances and delivery vehicles to the non-West? Whether the West responds by acknowledging that the problem is techno-scientific modernity as a whole - acknowledging that "we (too) are the enemy', that 'our' laboratories, 'our* corporations and 'our' scientists first developed most of the weapons that now threaten us - or whether it responds by territorializing logics that view the problem as 'out there' with 'them' is a crucial question.

Realists have seized upon China as an example of their theories—ignoring that their conclusions arise out of fears over an uncertain American future and the will to justify military domination, not a “true” picture of China.

Pan 04

(Chengxin, Professor of Political Science at Australian National University, “The ‘China Threat’ in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics”, Alternatives, June-July)

Having examined how the "China threat" literature is enabled by and serves the purpose of a particular U.S. self-construction, I want to turn now to the issue of how this literature represents a discursive construction of other, instead of an "objective" account of Chinese reality. This, I argue, has less to do with its portrayal of China as a threat per se than with its essentialization and totalization of China as an externally knowable object, independent of historically contingent contexts or dynamic international interactions. In this sense, the discursive construction of China as a threatening other cannot be detached from (neo)realism, a positivist. ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced to endless interstate rivalry for power and survival. As many critical IR scholars have noted, (neo) realism is not a transcendent description of global reality but is predicated on the modernist Western identity, which, in the quest for scientific certainty, has come to define itself essentially as the sovereign territorial nation-state. This realist self-identity of Western states leads to the constitution of anarchy as the sphere of insecurity, disorder, and war. In an anarchical system, as (neo) realists argue, "the gain of one side is often considered to be the loss of the other,"''5 and "All other states are potential threats."'•^ In order to survive in such a system, states inevitably pursue power or capability. In doing so, these realist claims represent what R. B. J. Walker calls "a specific historical articulation of relations of universality/particularity and self/Other."^^ The (neo) realist paradigm has dominated the U.S. IR discipline in general and the U.S. China studies field in particular. As Kurt Campbell notes, after the end of the Cold War, a whole new crop of China experts "are much more likely to have a background in strategic studies or international relations than China itself. ""^^ As a result, for those experts to know China is nothing more or less than to undertake a geopolitical analysis of it, often by asking only a few questions such as how China will "behave" in a strategic sense and how it may affect the regional or global balance of power, with a particular emphasis on China's military power or capabilities. As Thomas J. Christensen notes, "Although many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of the [China threat] debate is the assessment of China's overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional powers."''^ Consequently, almost by default, China emerges as an absolute other and a threat thanks to this (neo) realist prism. The (neo) realist emphasis on survival and security in international relations dovetails perfectly with the U.S. self-imagination, because for the United States to define itself as the indispensable nation in a world of anarchy is often to demand absolute security. As James Chace and Caleb Carr note, "for over two centuries the aspiration toward an eventual condition of absolute security has been viewed as central to an effective American foreign policy."50 And this self-identification in turn leads to the definition of not only "tangible" foreign powers but global contingency and uncertainty per se as threats. For example, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush repeatedly said that "the enemy [of America] is unpredictability. The enemy is instability. "5' Similarly, arguing for the continuation of U.S. Cold War alliances, a high-ranking Pentagon official asked, "if we pull out, who knows what nervousness will result? "^2 Thus understood, by its very uncertain character, China would now automatically constitute a threat to the United States. For example, Bernstein and Munro believe that "China's political unpredictability, the always-present possibility that it will fall into a state of domestic disunion and factional fighting," constitutes a source of dangers. In like manner, Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen write: If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate, should the world breathe a sigh of relief? Not entirely. . . . Drawing China into the web of global interdependence may do more to encourage peace than war, but it cannot guarantee that the pursuit of heartfelt political interests will be blocked by a fear of economic consequences. . . . U.S. efforts to create a stable balance across the Taiwan Strait might deter the use of force under certain circumstances, but certainly not all.54 The upshot, therefore, is that since China displays no absolute certainty for peace, it must be, by definition, an uncertainty, and hence, a threat. In the same way, a multitude of other unpredictable factors (such as ethnic rivalry, local insurgencies, overpopulation, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, rogue states, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism) have also been labeled as "threats" to U.S. security. Yet, it seems that in the post-Cold War environment, China represents a kind of uncertainty par excellence. "Whatever the prospects for a more peaceful, more democratic, and more just world order, nothing seems more uncertain today than the future of post-Deng China,"55 argues Samuel Kim. And such an archetypical uncertainty is crucial to the enterprise of U.S. self-construction, because it seems that only an uncertainty with potentially global consequences such as China could justify U.S. indispensability or its continued world dominance. In this sense, Bruce Cumings aptly suggested in 1996 that China (as a threat) was basically "a metaphor for an enormously expensive Pentagon that has lost its bearings and that requires a formidable 'renegade state' to define its mission (Islam is rather vague, and Iran lacks necessary weights)."56

Their realism inevitable argument does not apply to China—our relationship and the ways in which we choose to construct them are fluid.

Yaqing 10

(Qin, Assistant President of the Foreign Affairs College at Bejing and Professor of English and International Studies, International Society as a Process: Institutions, Identities, and China’s Peaceful Rise", The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2010, July 21st 2010, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 21-22).

Identity in process means that an actor’s identity is constructed and re-constructed by processual forces which come from relations in motion. If we follow Buzan’s categorization, any state could be called a revisionist, including the United States, the UK, or France, for in their identity revisionist elements can be easily detected. This is essentially the concept of ‘identity in fixity’, static and non-transformable. The reality is that any identity is identity in process. In the past three decades, China’s success in peaceful rise has been mainly due to its own change, which comes from interaction with and practices in international society.45 We did not have another cold war because, to a large extent, China changed and brought the change as well as itself into international society. It is often argued over the question that such change is tactical or fundamental, or as a result of calculation or of ideational reshaping.46 It is a false question, for the two again are inseparable.47 Change includes behavior change and identity change, which are inter- and correlated. Action starting from interest calculation leads an actor into a process and once inside the process mere interest calculation will not work, for the process has its own dynamics and the complex relations may entangle the actor in endless intersubjective practices. The intensive interaction among the actor and other actors and between the actor and the process is powerfully transformative.48 Bian thus is the key to understanding such processes. Continuity through change and change through intersubjective practices is the key to the process-oriented interpretation of society as well as of identity. Buzan argues that it will be extremely difficult for China to accept the primary institutions of international society. We may use one example to illustrate the opposite. Even if we take a brief look at the case of the market institution, we may see how the process approach works. The story tells us how China has accepted the institution of market economy and together with it how China has gradually changed its identity from a most rigidly planned economy to largely a market economy. The process is a difficult, gradual, and through all the ups and downs, but it is not necessarily violent. Market economy has been long a primary institution of the Western international society. China’s acceptance of the institution of market economy was extremely difficult and painful at the beginning. For thirty years since 1949, China adopted the planned economy model and practiced it to the extreme during the Cultural Revolution. Market was not a mere economic issue. Rather it was related to China’s identity as a socialist state and to the Chinese Communist Party’s identity as a revolutionary party. The first serious test for China’s reform and opening up was therefore whether China would accept the market institution. Using the three steps in the process approach we argue that the key to this test was how to look at the two opposites: market and planning.

Discourse Voting Issue

Negative and simplistic caricatures of China are racist and weaken our ability to create intelligent foreign policy.

Lubman 04

(Stanley, Lecturer in Law and Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California ( Berkeley)"The Dragon As Demon: Images Of China On Capitol Hill" (March 4, 2004). Center for the Study of Law and Society Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. JSP/Center for the Study of Law and Society Faculty Working Papers. Paper 18 http://repositories.cdlib.org/csls/fwp/18).

In Congress, alliances of partisans of single issues insist vocally on highly negative views of China. Critics of China’s human rights practices, including a repressive criminal process and suppression of dissent, have joined with members who speak for the religious right in decrying China’s birth-control policies and hostility to religions not licensed by the state. Supporters of Tibetan independence and an autonomous Taiwan add further heat to debate, as do others in whose geostrategic perspective China has already become a threat to American security. Underlying the views of some, echoing the labor unions, is a commitment to protectionism. One respected Senator suggested during the debates that latent racism may lurk even deeper. These views cloud debate because they often caricature a complex society and foster unconstructive moralizing rather than analysis of the problems that they address. By demonizing China they obstruct the formulation and maintenance of a coherent American policy toward China and weaken Congress’ contribution to making US policy.