Neg China Reaction da 1NC

Answers to 2AC Pan K

Pan is epistemically reductionist. Reject the aff voting criteria because they can’t meet their own standard.

Jones 14

David Martin, Professor of Politics at University of Glasgow, PhD from LSE, Australian Journal of Political Science, February 21, 2014, 49:1, "Managing the China Dream: Communist Party politics after the Tiananmen incident.”

Notwithstanding this Western fascination with China and the positive response of former Marxists, such as Jacques, to the new China, Pan discerns an Orientalist ideology distorting Western commentary on the party state, and especially its international relations (6). Following Edward Said, Pan claims that such Western Orientalism reveals ‘not something concrete about the orient, but something about the orientalists themselves, their recurring latent desire of fears and fantasies about the orient’ (16). In order to unmask the limits of Western representations of China’s rise, Pan employs a critical ‘methodology’ that ‘draws on constructivist and deconstructivist approaches’ (9). Whereas the ‘former questions the underlying dichotomy of reality/knowledge in Western study of China’s international relations’, the latter shows how paradigmatic representations of China ‘condition the way we give meaning to that country’ and ‘are socially constitutive of it’ (9). Pan maintains that the two paradigms of ‘China threat’ and ‘China opportunity’ in Western discourse shape China’s reality for Western ‘China watchers’ (3). These discourses, Pan claims, are ‘ambivalent’ (65). He contends that this ‘bifocal representation of China, like Western discourses of China more generally, tell us a great deal about the west itself, its self -imagination, its torn, anxious, subjectivity, as well as its discursive effects of othering’ (65). This is a large claim.

Interestingly, Pan fails to note that after the Tiananmen incident in 1989, Chinese new left scholarship also embraced Said’s critique of Orientalism in order to reinforce both the party state and a burgeoning sense of Chinese nationalism. To counter Western liberal discourse, academics associated with the Central Party School promoted an ideology of Occidentalism to deflect domestic and international pressure to democratise China. In this, they drew not only upon Said, but also upon Foucault and the post-1968 school of French radical thought that, as Richard Wolin has demonstrated, was itself initiated in an appreciation of Mao’s cultural revolution. In other words, the critical and deconstructive methodologies that came to influence American and European social science from the 1980s had a Maoist inspiration (Wolin 2010: 12–18).

Subsequently, in the changed circumstances of the 1990s, as American sinologist Fewsmith has shown, young Chinese scholars ‘adopted a variety of postmodernist and critical methodologies’ (2008: 125). Paradoxically, these scholars, such as Wang Hui and Zhang Kuan (Wang 2011), had been educated in the USA and were familiar with fashionable academic criticism of a postmodern and deconstructionist hue that ‘demythified’ the West (Fewsmith 2008: 125–29). This approach,promulgated in the academic journal Dushu (Readings), deconstructed, via Said and Foucault, Western narratives about China. Zhang Kuan, in particular, rejected Enlightenment values and saw postmodern critical theory as a method to build up a national ‘discourse of resistance’ and counter Western demands regarding issues such as human rights and intellectual property. It is through its affinity with this self-strengthening, Occidentalist lens, that Pan’s critical study should perhaps be critically read. Simply put, Pan identifies a political economy of fear and desire that informs and complicates Western foreign policy and, Pan asserts, tells us more about the West’s ‘self-imagination’ than it does about Chinese reality. Pan attempts to sustain this claim via an analysis, in Chapter 5, of the self-fulfilling prophecy of the China threat, followed, in Chapters 6 and 7, by exposure of the false promises and premises of the China ‘opportunity’. Pan certainly offers a provocative insight into Western attitudes to China and their impact on Chinese political thinking. In particular, he demonstrates that China’s foreign policy-makers react negatively to what they view as a hostile American strategy of containment (101). In this context, Pan contends, accurately, that Sino–US relations are mutually constitutive and the USA must take some responsibility for the rise of China threat (107). This latter point, however, is one that Australian realists like Owen Harries, whom Pan cites approvingly, have made consistently since the late 1990s. In other words, not all Western analysis uncritically endorses the view that China’s rise is threatening. Nor is all Western perception of this rise reducible to the threat scenario advanced by recent US administrations.

Pan’s subsequent argument that the China opportunity thesis leads to inevitable disappointment and subtly reinforces the China threat paradigm is, also, somewhat misleading. On the one hand, Pan notes that Western anticipation of ‘China’s transformation and democratization’ has ‘become a burgeoning cottage industry’ (111). Yet, on the other hand, Pan observes that Western commentators, such as Jacques, demonstrate a growing awareness that the democratisation thesis is a fantasy. That is, Pan, like Jacques, argues that China ‘will neither democratize nor collapse, but may instead remain politically authoritarian and economically stable at the same time’ (132). To merge, as Pan does, the democratisation thesis into its authoritarian antithesis in order to evoke ‘present Western disillusionment’ (132) with China is somewhat reductionist. Pan’s contention that we need a new paradigm shift ‘to free ourselves from the positivist aspiration to grand theory or transcendental scien- tific paradigm itself’ (157) might be admirable, but this will not be achieved by a con- structivism that would ultimately meet with the approval of what Brady terms China’s thought managers (Brady: 6).

The Pan K ignores reciprocal Chinese threat construction of the US. It should be rejected for its epistemic limitations.

Callahan 05

(William, professor of international politics and China studies at the University of Manchester and codirector of the British Inter-university China Center, Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 701–714, doi:10.1017/S0260210505006716

Indeed, analysts increasingly criticise the political consequences of an Euro-American mode of representing China as a threat;10 since Chinese security discourse is rarely analysed it is now necessary to explore the political consequences of China’s modes of self-representation and how ‘China threat theory’ is produced in the PRC. Indeed, this example will add to the critical examination of two of the main research themes of security studies: strategic culture and threat perception. To put it another way, the emergence of China is not simply an issue of international diplomacy and national security. It has important intertextual overlaps with other discourses that frame questions about China and the world, such as the dynamic between domestic and international politics, economics and politics, dangers and opportunities – as they produce Western and Chinese identity. A recent article in the popular Chinese news magazine, Liaowang, explains how China’s ‘peaceful rise’ is intimately linked with ‘China threat’ in an overlap of domestic and international politics:11 The world knows about the achievements of China’s reform and opening. But since the beginning of the 1990s, ‘China threat theory’ has been churned out from some corners of the world . . . to smear China’s image and to contain China’s rise. With the appearance of ‘peaceful rise theory’ international opinion suddenly realises the weaknesses of ‘China threat theory’. . . . Peaceful rise is the formula that sums up the essence of domestic policy and foreign relations in reform China. Indeed, the articles in this Forum likewise speak of dangers when they discuss China’s opportunities. This suggests that as in the popular Chinese phrase ‘weijicrisis’, danger (wei) and opportunity (ji) are not separate, but are intimately linked. To understand the opportunities of China, it is necessary to see how the mirror-image of peaceful rise – the China threat – shapes the image of rising China not just abroad, but within China itself. Many writers take the meaning of ‘China threat’ as self-evident, and then proceed to either agree or disagree with it. This introduction will examine the production of ‘China threat theory’ in order to provide a critical background for the discussion of China’s place in the world examined in the remaining articles. First, it will examine Western warnings of a China threat, and Chinese responses to them. Some commentators frame this as a geopolitical debate in Sino-US public diplomacy, and warn that it risks spinning out of control in a security dilemma. While I do not disagree with this concern, the essay will show that because the Chinese reaction is much stronger than the American action, something else is going on. The main purpose for these Chinese language texts is not to correct foreign misunderstandings; the key audience for ‘China threat theory’ is domestic, for identity construction in the PRC. I will argue that Chinese texts gather together a diverse and contradictory set of criticisms of the PRC and use ‘China threat theory’ discourse to collectively label them as foreign. By then refuting the ‘China threat theory’ criticisms as fallacies spread by ill-intentioned foreigners, the texts assert ‘peaceful rise’ as the proper way to understand China’s emergence on the world stage. Thus in a curious way, the negative images of the PRC that are continually circulated in Chinese texts serve to construct Chinese identity through a logic of estrangement that separates the domestic self from the foreign other. Although Chinese discussions of ‘China threat theory’ are successful in generating national feeling within China, the discourse actually tends to reproduce China as a threatening power abroad because refutations of ‘China threat theory’ end up generating a new set of foreign threats. Hence rather than engaging in critical security studies to question the international order, these refutations of ‘China threat theory’ actually buttress the existing geopolitical framework of international relations. In the conclusion, I argue that we need to question how Realism has colonised the ‘rise of China’ debate by deliberately using theory to open up critical space for the issues discussed in this Forum’s consideration of China’s rise.

8 Johnston, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?’, p. 6.

9 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, revised edition. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 5.

10 See Johnston, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?’; Emma Broomfield, ‘Perceptions of Danger: The

China Threat Theory’, Journal of Contemporary China, 12:35 (2003), pp. 265–84; Chengxin Pan,

‘The ‘‘China Threat’’ in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics’, Alternatives, 29:3 (2004), pp. 305–31.

11 Ling Dequan, ‘‘‘Heping jueqi’’ gangju muzhang’ [Explaining ‘Peaceful rise’], Liaowang,

5 (2 February 2004), p. 6.

The Pan K reinscribes threat construction by imagining China as victim

Callahan 05

(William, professor of international politics and China studies at the University of Manchester and codirector of the British Inter-university China Center, Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 701–714, doi:10.1017/S0260210505006716

Hence by turning China threat into a theory, the discourse moves from merely responding to criticism in a negative way, actively producing positive meaning. Rather than simply ‘putting an end to ‘‘China threat theory’’ ’ as the first article on the topic advised in 1992,37 the discourse continually reproduces and circulates this set of images of a peacefully rising China that is the victim of criticism that only comes from abroad. Although Taiwan is a site of much discussion of a ‘China threat’, Taiwanese people are rarely criticised in the mainland’s ‘China threat theory’ texts. This underlines how the category ‘China threat theory’ is used to sort out the domestic from the foreign: Taiwanese are seen by Beijing as Chinese compatriots. Because Beijing frames ‘China threat theory’ as a ‘foreign fallacy’ and Cross-Straits relations as an issue of domestic politics, the large and vociferous cache of ‘China threat’ texts from Taiwan are erased by ‘China threat theory’ discourse. Although Chinese premier Zhu Rongji sought to change the subject from China threat to China opportunity, many ‘China threat theory’ articles engage in a proliferation of foreign threats. As a former Deputy Chief of Staff of the PLA reasons: ‘If we follow the logic of ‘‘China threat theory’’, who benefits from it, and who thus can be a threat to other countries’ security?’38 The common response to China threat theory thus is that America is the real threat.39 Yet it is not just the sole superpower that is seen as a threat. ‘China threat theory’ articles also generate a ‘Japan threat theory’ and an ‘India threat theory’. Many articles tell us that real reason for Japanese scholars, politicians and officials warning of a potential China threat is to justify rearming Japan and reviving the imperial Japanese militarism of the early 20th century.40 This concern provided the back-story that motivated the mass anti-Japanese demonstrations that rocked China in April 2005. As Shih concludes about Sino-Japanese diplomacy more generally, ‘the perception of a threatening Japan serves to differentiate China from Japan and consolidate an otherwise shaky national identity in China’.41 Likewise, when India’s leaders stated that their reason for becoming a nuclear power in 1998 was not the threat from Pakistan so much as the threat from China, a Chinese response was to create an ‘India threat theory’. An anonymous author concludes that if India continues to be unfriendly, the PRC will have to contain India. This policy would encircle India with a network of hostile alliances and foment Islamic fundamentalism in Kashmir and beyond.42 The message is clear; if a country rejects China’s ‘peaceful overtures’, then China will fight diplomatically, militarily, and rhetorically, including spreading an ‘India threat theory’ in South Asia and beyond. Although ‘China threat theory’ is ascribed to the Cold War thinking of foreigners who suffer from an enemy deprivation syndrome, the use of containment as a response to threats in Chinese texts suggests that Chinese strategists are also seeking to fill the symbolic gap left by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the key threat to the PRC after 1960. Refutations of ‘China threat theory’ do not seek to deconstruct the discourse of ‘threat’ as part of critical security studies. Rather they are expressions of a geopolitical identity politics because they refute ‘Chinese’ threats as a way of facilitating the production of an America threat, a Japan threat, an India threat, and so on. Uniting to fight these foreign threats affirms China’s national identity. Unfortunately, by refuting China threat in this bellicose way – that is by generating a new series of threats – the China threat theory texts end up confirming the threat that they seek to deny: Japan, India and Southeast Asia are increasingly threatened by China’s protests of peace.43

No link. Our scenario constructs China as reactive and opportunistic, not as a threat

Callahan 05

(William, professor of international politics and China studies at the University of Manchester and codirector of the British Inter-university China Center, Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 701–714, doi:10.1017/S0260210505006716

The argument of this essay is not that China is a threat. Rather, it has examined the productive linkages that knit together the image of China as a peacefully rising power and the discourse of China as a threat to the economic and military stability of East Asia. It would be easy to join the chorus of those who denounce ‘China threat theory’ as the misguided product of the Blue Team, as do many in China and the West. But that would be a mistake, because depending on circumstances anything – from rising powers to civilian aircraft – can be interpreted as a threat. The purpose is not to argue that interpretations are false in relation to some reality (such as that China is fundamentally peaceful rather than war-like), but that it is necessary to unpack the political and historical context of each perception of threat. Indeed, ‘China threat’ has never described a unified American understanding of the PRC: it has always been one position among many in debates among academics, public intellectuals and policymakers. Rather than inflate extremist positions (in both the West and China) into irrefutable truth, it is more interesting to examine the debates that produced the threat/opportunity dynamic. This essay has examined how ‘China threat theory’ is enthusiastically reproduced and circulated beyond the Beltway in Chinese texts to show how Chinese elites engage in their own threat interpretations and national identity productions. Thus it underlines how ‘China threat’ and ‘China opportunity’ are not diametrically opposed as sites of total truth or falsity; threat and opportunity are intimately related as complementary opposites that entail each other.

Our epistemology is better. We question the automatic assumption that engagement with China is good.

Menon 01

Rajon, scholar with the New America Foundation, Commentary, Vol. 111, No. 2, February 2001, p.

https://lists.lsit.ucsb.edu/archives/gordon-newspost/2001-May/001274.html

With few exceptions, American Sinologists are proponents of engagement. Draw China into a web of political and economic transactions, they argue, and with time Beijing will acquire a stake in managing, rather than challenging, the prevailing order in Asia and elsewhere. Indeed, in a classic case of what the social psychologist Irving Janis termed “groupthink,” engagement has become the orthodoxy. The Chinese government, heir to a long and rich tradition of courting “barbarians,” has, with great finesse and subtlety, encouraged the preaching of this gospel in the West—above all in the United States. Though our Sinologists will therefore not like what Aaron L. Friedberg has to say, his essay deserves to be read widely precisely because it is an act of heresy.

We turn back the discourse voting issue. Repression of predictive talk makes them more likely to happen

Macy 1995

(Joanna, general systems scholar and deep ecologist, “Working Through Environmental Despair,” in Ecopsychology, http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/macy.pdf

There is also the superstition that negative thoughts are self-fulfilling. This is of a piece with the notion, popular in New Age circles, that we create our own reality I have had people tell me that “to speak of catastrophe will just make it more likely to happen.” Actually, the contrary is nearer to the truth. Psychoanalytic theory and personal experience show us that it is precisely what we repress that eludes our conscious control and tends to erupt into behavior. As Carl Jung observed, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.” But ironically, in our current situation, the person who gives warning of a likely ecological holocaust is often made to feel guilty of contributing to that very fate.