Zenel Garcia is an associate Professor of Security Studies at the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College. He is the author of “China’s Western Frontier and Eurasia: The Politics of State and Region-Building” and “China’s Military Modernization, Japan’s Normalization and the South China Sea Territorial Disputes.”
Federal Newswire
What does the US misunderstand about China?
Zenel Garcia
This question really animated my second book that looks at China's western frontier. I think if I have to distill it [down] to one major thing that we miss as a key motivator, most people will agree it’s stability.
The stability is coming from economic development. But when you begin to break down what economic development really means for the CCP, it’s that they are at a stage in which development has been incredibly uneven.
[It’s] mostly concentrated on the coastline, and the problem that they've been unable to solve, despite internally speaking about this for the last 30-plus years, is the development gap between the coast and the interior.
How do they generate an engine that can attract foreign direct investment–to have sustainable development in the interior of the country?
The automatic assumption is made that China’s Belt and Road initiative is inherently a geopolitical construct. Xi Jinping thinks about starting it in 2013, and we move on. If you look at all the projects and corridors that are announced in 2013 and the ones that continue to be highlighted, every single one of those corridors originates as a provincial-level initiative that was promoted by provincial-level officials in an effort to generate some sort of development in their frontier provinces.
If you look at a place like Xinjiang for example, they're connected to the China economic corridor in central Asia, [through] the new Eurasian land bridge. All of those technically originated in Xinjiang [through the] internal politics in the 90’s and early 2000’s as they're thinking “how do we bring economic development here?”
Others [in] the CCP believe that economic development brings social stability. We could debate how accurate that is and where that development goes right, but that is inherently what their internal discourse seems to be.
So when we look at the Belt and Road Initiative, yes, there are geopolitical components to it, and those matter. But I argue that the Belt and Road Initiative is really to be able to generate new supply chains that link the interior of China to adjacent regions and beyond. This seems to be, from their own writing, one of the most logical ways for them to bring economic development to an area that otherwise would not be receiving a lot of foreign direct investment. It's almost as, “if you build it, they will come.”
Federal Newswire
Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative more about connecting them to neighboring countries or countering American influence?
Zenel Garcia
I think that nails it right on the head. What's really fascinating to me about studying the Belt and Road Initiative is that the deeper you dig, the more fragmented it looks.
For people that study Chinese domestic politics, there's a framework that has existed now for the better part of 20 years of fragmented authoritarianism that governs China. The guy at the top makes a slogan, [and] everybody else interprets it.
The policy that gets implemented can vary widely from place to place, because different investments by stakeholders [lead to] factionalism. But also, the CCP in general, even under Xi Jinping, allows for some level of experimentation by lower levels of government.
When you look at the Belt and Road Initiative from that perspective, you have your vision statements. You have the Belt and Road vision documents there. There's been at least two of these, but they're pretty proud [of them]. They could be interpreted in a million ways, and you find that the provinces compete with each other for situating themselves as a gateway to another region so that they can then attract more investment from central authorities and bring in more investment from foreign investors.
There are geopolitical effects of this, and there's no doubt that Xi and other officials–the Minister of Foreign Affairs, etc.--will go out and promote this as China being a responsible stakeholder in the international system that's bringing development and capacity to developing countries. To a degree, all of these things can tick off a box, but the implementation of projects is so fragmented and there's so much local interplay there that it's not a single story.
Federal Newswire
What are China's motives by taking Russia's side in the Ukraine war?
Zenel Garcia
Last year I co-authored a piece on this topic of Sino-Russian relations and the war in Ukraine. We were tackling precisely this notion that from our perspective here in the United States and perhaps Western Europe more broadly, it certainly looks like China has taken Russia’s side.
We can make a really strong argument that China's talking points on this war are pretty much Moscow's talking points--the sense that security of all parties needs to be respected, which is…essentially Moscow's complaint about NATO's expansion.
One of the arguments that my colleague, Kevin Modlin, and I make in this paper and others that we made for the Diplomat was that the Sino-Russian relationship is probably best understood as a limited partnership. There's sort of a broad agreement at this systemic level about wanting to promote a multipolar order and accelerate the emergence of that order. They see that as mutually beneficial, because of course that would mean that it limits the ability of the United States and our allies and partners to operate in the way that we have done since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
China and Russia see each other as important poles in this multipolar order, because it helps maintain a check on what they perceive to be American hegemony. However, when you begin to unpack what that partnership actually looks like, we're talking about policy cooperation.
Perhaps at that level what they like is coordination, because they don't want to make serious commitments to each other.
China's effectively locked in an awkward position, because what Russia is doing in Ukraine undermines what China claims to champion internationally, which is the very strong interpretation of sovereignty and territorial integrity. That's 99% of their arguments about our actions in the international system.
That's certainly uncomfortable, and it's probably not in their interest to see Russia lose. Because if Russia loses, then its position as a great power and the multipolar order is brought into question. This is very problematic, because Russia and China share a long border and historically not a very stable one.
The Chinese probably are not excited that Russia is doing this, but they are also not going to throw Russia under the bus, because even a weaker Russia is probably not going to be able to play the role that it wants to. But, by the way, a weak Russia can still cause a lot of trouble in China's frontier regions, which is not in the interest of the CCP.
China has figured out in the last two years how to reap benefits from what Russia has done, sometimes at the expense of Russia. This is not new, because China has been able to capitalize on Russia shooting itself in the foot since the Soviet collapse.
If you track Chinese-Central Asian relations, a lot of the foundations for that bilateral relation occur because of Russia's and the Federation's efforts to maintain a monopoly of influence in the region. By overplaying that hand, they've made a case for Central Asian leaders to try to diversify.
In a nutshell, the way that I see the Sino-Russian relationship is that there's an agreement that they want to accelerate a multipolar order. There's mutual interest in ensuring that happens, but in actually making commitments to help each other out, or in this case, China helping Russia out militarily or significant material support to Russia, there's less of an incentive mechanism there, because the costs are higher than the benefits to be received.
The third part of that is that China has learned how to navigate the headache that Russia has given it by extracting concessions out of Russia on energy prices and projects on regional influence. At the same time, [they are] able to use the effects of the Ukraine war as a rhetorical point in the global south for why the United States is also to blame for this.
Federal Newswire
What are the lessons for China from the US sanctions on Russia?
Zenel Garcia
They're definitely studying the conflict.
Militarily, there's a question about where the [China] is today. Despite all of this modernization and restructuring, there's a sense that [China’s military] is a lot more so than the Russian Federation's military.
There's a lot of self-criticism about where the PLA (China’s military) stands. There's a lot of, “are we ready?” A lot of very interesting discussions about what it would require to take over Taiwan, and what it would take to conduct an amphibious operation of that scale, which the PLA has never conducted.
There's a little bit more of a sliver [of] self-reflection that happens in the PLA that doesn't seem to have happened in the Russian military. If you're Xi Jinping, you have to imagine [he is] probably looking at how Russia has performed. Given that a lot of China's military was fashioned off the Russian military's own structure and approach to war, there's probably something that has to be reassessed there.
Without a doubt, I think they're learning lessons about this. They're certainly learning lessons about the efficacy of private military contractors. Just looking at Prigozhin’s attempted coup, or whatever framing we want to use, that could be problematic for the CCP. Certainly not a tool that they would like to make use of, even though the vast majority of Belt and Road projects are protected by private security contractors trained in China, as opposed to PLA officers going abroad, for example.
Economically, it raises a couple of more interesting questions on the military.
On one hand, we can say the United States has done a pretty effective job in lining up our partners and allies; trying to keep them somewhat lined up behind the kinds of sanctions that we've imposed on Russia. I would argue they've been pretty severe, even if not necessarily in effect.
Economic sanctions take time. All Russian industry that you sanctioned, removing them from the SWIFT system, locking their foreign reserves. These are unprecedented at this scale, so I would say that the Chinese have certainly raised an eyebrow at that.
China is a fundamentally different beast than Russia. Russia's economy is important insofar as hydrocarbons and agricultural products. China sits at the center of global supply chains for almost everything upstream and downstream.
Those levels of sanctions against China are probably not viable unless you are committed to also joining a suicide pact, so to speak. You're going to feel a world of pain, and if that's true, that's problematic from our perspective, because even the sanctions that we've put on Russia had an effect on inflation rates around the world.
We can only begin to estimate what would happen if we try to replicate that level of sanctioning on China.
Federal Newswire
Do you think the Chinese believe that we would impose sanctions?
Zenel Garcia
I don't believe that they think that we would go to that extent.
However, nothing stops them from planning for something of that scale to happen, and I think that gets to…an internal discussion about more self-reliance. I would argue this is something that's really picked up pace since the economic work between the two countries started. [It] has effectively convinced the CCP that there are certain industries and things that need to be onshore and need to be internally developed and not be so reliant on external powers.
There's also the United States’ track record on using sanctions as a tool. We're the most prolific user of economic sanctions in the national system. The Chinese have to think, “well, they're already using it in an economic war with us. If push comes to shove, how much worse do they get? How do we mitigate the problem from moving forward?”
I would say there's a level of confidence…we would not go to the extent that we have gone with Russia for multiple reasons, [including] mutual economic pain. The other part is you can never be a hundred percent certain so you…would be stupid not to dedicate some of this investment in some sort of self-reliance.
Federal Newswire
Is it possible for the United States to have some form of a strategy or a policy of reciprocity in dealing with China? Or do you think they'll talk reciprocity but just go on behaving any way they choose?
Zenel Garcia
I'm not sure. Our track record is a bit mixed, but it's not entirely a negative one.
If we look back at our efforts in the strategic and economic dialogue that we used to have under Bush Junior and the Obama Administration, the studies done in those years would indicate that even though we didn't get to where we wanted to go with China 100% of the time, we got pretty close. A lot of their domestic, legal, and economic reforms were significantly influenced by those dialogues and partnerships at all levels of government.
A big thing for us was intellectual property protections. It still is, but on that note China has become the second largest player on intellectual property into United States companies in the world.
In surveys done before the pandemic in the Chambers of Commerces in China, American firms would indicate that China and American firms were increasingly more confident that their intellectual property was being secured, versus prior years. In other words, we were going in the right direction.
I do think that reciprocity, depending on the sector we're talking about, is probably necessary.
We clearly see this with semiconductors, but ultimately the effect might be limited, if only because the Chinese are investing significantly in that resource. They're mainly focused on emerging technologies where they think they're going to be able to leapfrog past something. I think reciprocity will only get you so far depending on which kind of economy we're talking about.
The fundamental problem that I see in the bilateral economic relationship was always market access and what was necessary for market access. We know that there are significant restrictions on American firms entering certain economic sectors in China. A lot of that was predicated on the Chinese wanting to protect national champions in those industries so that they then become international competitors to our firms.
We've seen that playbook before. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan did this as a developmental state.
The problem is the scale is fundamentally different. China is becoming a peer competitor of a lot of emerging technologies, which puts American firms in a very difficult situation, because they don't have market access, and now they're having to compete globally on pricing.
There is another fundamental problem. For the past hundred-plus years, it's been the United States and European countries that have dominated standard settings in emerging technologies. We're entering a time with a lot of very important technologies, especially in information technologies, where the Chinese hold the patents and hold the standards.
Federal Newswire
Which of China's actions should alarm us and which are blown out of proportion?
Zenel Garcia
That's a great question, because there's only so many resources you can allocate to be playing whack-a-mole with everything.
When I teach on China at the Army War College, the way I present it is, China presents a challenge to the United States. The nature of that challenge changes depending on what we're talking about. It's not the same thing–not all places all at once.
The challenge that China presents in the South China Sea is a different challenge than what it presents in the UN or whatever topic you want to go with.
Where are we blowing it out of proportion? I think the Belt and Road Initiative is probably the easiest one.
One of the reasons I say that is… the Chinese have spent nearly a trillion dollars [on the] Belt and Road Initiative. Another $500 billion has been invested into Belt and Road Initiative projects by Western firms and institutions, which means that Western firms and institutions have been able to profit from many of these projects.
China builds a road that can be used by anybody. China builds electric power and an industrial park somewhere where a firm can use that industrial park to get that power using that road.
I think it requires a bit more of a look at the role of the Belt and Road and where and when we should challenge or perhaps compliment so that we can actually have a seat at the table.
The other areas are these ideas of parallel institutions.
BRICS comes up regularly. I've seen my fair share of reporting in the last two weeks of people talking about dedollarization. The Chinese Yuan and the Renminbi is just not going to be an international economy unless the CCP chooses to allow that currency to float freely. They're simply not going to, because it takes away one of the core pillars of how they manage and reallocate resources internally in China.
I'd say on the Belt and Road and BRICS, we're probably overhyping the problem.
Federal Newswire
Do you believe China will conduct a land war with Taiwan, and will it work?
Zenel Garcia
I don't think [so]...as far as I've been able to see from PLA's own writing, they don't think they're ready, and they don't think they'll be ready in the coming year.
If we think about the restructuring of the PLA being less than a decade old…I don't think the PLA believes it's there.
That doesn't mean that Xi Jinping won't make the decision. If you look at the priority policies of the PRC right now, almost all of them are focused around economic development and social stability. The last thing they want is any potential fallout that might happen because of Taiwan.
The only way I can think of Taiwan becoming an issue is through inadvertent escalation, or if the CCP leadership comes to the conclusion that time is not on their side.
Now we've probably heard our fair share of both uniformed officers and scholars make an argument for 2027 or 2035, but Xi Jinping has never actually given you an exact date for unification, and in fact, that's the closest we can get to a clear statement on him in Taiwan.
[Xi] seems to have come to the conclusion that something has changed in America's policy towards Taiwan. No matter how many times he keeps talking about his One China position, he thinks that …it has now become a core component of the bilateral relationship. Americans, in his view, have come to view Taiwan as a strategic asset that must be defended or can be utilized to negotiate and extract concessions from China.
If you think about this, our last major crisis was in the 1990's. We're not counting Pelosi's visit there, because the scale of that is just not–at least internationally–the same scale.
I think they want a conflict, but certainly the capabilities are fundamentally different, and I would argue that now the Chinese believe that, at least when it comes to the proximate region, that balance has shifted. The higher tempo of exercises is a demonstration of force. Probably not ideal if you're sitting in DC and you're seeing that.
Federal Newswire
How has your upbringing as a Cuban-American informed your views of US-China relations?
Zenel Garcia
When I left Cuba and came to the US, [I saw] the fundamental differences. I'm not even talking about just simple economic differences that are very obvious. But just how classes are conducted, students asking questions. You start to notice these things.
I think immigrant students, when they come to the United States, make those comparisons, and [it’s] really fascinating.
My family tried leaving Cuba five times, which tells you we failed four times. Those four failures happened because our neighbors reported us. These are lifelong friends–they still are. But they had to, right?
If we were gone and somebody came knocking they would ask, “But how did you not know this was going to happen?” That's on you and your family–it’s collective punishments.
How has that shaped the way that I study China? The way that I see the world more broadly is that I lived in an oppressive authoritarian regime, and I've lived in the United States. So when I go to China I can see the monumental changes that have happened there even in the short time that I've studied it.
From 2012 until now, China has economically transformed. I've been to rural China year on year, and [now there is] high-speed rail everywhere, the wonderful skyscrapers, all of that stuff.
But you also notice surveillance. You also notice what people say, how they say it, and where they say it. You pick up on these things that, if you're not very attentive, you can miss. I guess that matters.
I am more keen and more attentive to the very little things as I walk around the streets in China or walk here in the US, because of those experiences.
Federal Newswire
Where can people go to follow your work?
Zenel Garcia
I'm on Twitter @zenel25. I post my research there. I publish more public commentary in The Diplomat and the policy forum hosted out of Australia National University. I just published and co-authored a piece with Dr. Christine Bianco on the impact of Chinese history on perceptions of the law in the South China Sea.
