The Key Similarities — and Differences — Between China and the United States’ Continental Empires
Modern China, like the United States, was built upon continental expansion
As Seen in Reaction.life
This is an op-ed. All opinions expressed are the author’s own.
This week marks the Chinese Communist Party's Third Plenum, a major meeting held every five years to set the direction of the country. From a deflationary spiral to mounting debt and a burst property bubble, China's future will demand hard decisions and not just political theatre. In light of this, though, it is worth looking at the past and asking a question which is infrequently asked: what do we actually mean by 'China'?
It is now a cliché to talk of American empire. As one writer put it, “it is time to move beyond statements of the obvious”. Every American state, besides the original thirteen colonies, was integrated through 19th-century westward expansion. But China’s own continental empire may be somewhat less obvious to many.
Just as the thirteen colonies of the early American republic embarked on a project of westward expansion throughout the 19th century, so China’s 20th century was defined by a process of territorial integration. Both amounted to versions of continental expansion and empire.
It is widely forgotten that in 1911 the borders of what we call ‘China’ were far from set after the collapse of China’s Qing dynasty in 1911. Both Tibet and Mongolia declared independence after the 1911 Xinhai revolution. Other areas which are now considered integral parts of China underwent periods of control by foreign imperial powers. The British had taken Hong Kong during China’s ‘century of humiliation’, under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Taiwan was for a period of time a Japanese colony, then briefly came under Chinese control between 1945-1949, and finally under the Nationalists’ control after their defeat by the communists in 1949. And the East Turkestan Republic was briefly a satellite state of the Soviets. It is no coincidence that these are the regions which China continues to feel least secure about today. Taiwan and Hong Kong are cases in point.
To call these territories historically ‘Chinese’ is therefore to overlook the reality of colonial expansion. Certainly, many (though not all) of these territories were taken from China by Western or Japanese imperial powers. But these were not all originally ‘Chinese’ territories. After all, many were acquired through conquest by the Qing Empire: beginning with the Junghar Wars in 1636. The difference is significant. James Millward’s polemic makes the point that using the terms “Qing” and “China” interchangeably is equivalent to viewing the Ottoman Empire and Turkey as synonymous.
Despite an endless rota of different regimes — republicanism, nationalism, fascism, and, finally, communism — the underlying 20th-century Chinese project was defined by territorial integration and nation-building. Like America’s westward expansion, this was done through a mixture of diplomacy, conflict, and settler-migration.
The similarities of the US and China’s settler-imperialism are striking. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the size of the early United States, American politicians realised that they had a problem: almost everyone who lived in Louisiana was French (imagine!). Americans were deeply concerned about this. Without American citizens living in the vast area, it would be susceptible to interference by European powers. The politician Thomas Rodney urged that “the American population must be increased…it must be made to overbalance that of every other description of persons”. So after the Louisiana payment was settled, settlers were sent.
Just so, in 1949 only 6% of Xinjiang was inhabited by Hans — the dominant ethnic race in China. Today, the Uyghurs are very much a minority — and being put in concentration camps. The Hukou system, which prohibits movement within China, was used to ensure that these Han settlers could not leave once they had been forced to move to Xinjiang. Just as 19th-century Americans had seen westward settler migration as essential to ensuring security against foreign imperial powers, so the CCP sought to use a form of settler-migration as a bulwark against a repeat of the ‘century of humiliation’. Both imperial projects were therefore driven by a deep sense of insecurity. In some sense, therefore, the US and China were not originally nation-states but ‘Empire-States’.
Even the rhetoric of their respective continental projects have similarities. Like the US perceived westward expansion as an inevitable “manifest destiny”, so China saw the assimilation of disputed territory as an organic process. One Chinese propaganda book, entitled The Inside Story of Outer Mongolia’s Independence, asserted that Mongolia was “an organic and integral” part of the “Chinese race”.
Americans and Chinese, however, both saw (and still see) themselves as exceptional. American exceptionalism explains continental empire in the terms of an “empire of liberty”. So too, China’s communist narrative was built upon anti-imperialism, and this still pervades today. Just as Jefferson portrayed America as morally superior to the British empire in the 19th-century, so Mao insisted on China’s international benevolence when compared with “U.S. imperialism”.
So what? Highlighting nations’ imperial pasts can become a fatuous exercise. Empire is morally reprehensible, but it is also historically ubiquitous - and many nations are guilty of its sins. Nevertheless, comparing empires can offer important insights.
The US and China may share similarities with respect to their continental expansion. However, there is one particularly important distinction. Unlike the US, China has become a global superpower whilst still in the process of integrating its perceived territory. In America the ‘western frontier’ had been reached by 1890, well before its rise to superpower status by 1945. This meant that America did not have to juggle being a superpower whilst also battling territory insecurity.
But China is already a colossus and yet territorial insecurity still pervades. That is why Taiwan is such a sensitive issue to Xi. China’s ascendancy has therefore been faster but — territorially speaking — more fragile. China’s territorial security and status as a consolidated ‘nation’ are playing catchup to its economic and international clout. This means that China’s foreign policy is not simply driven (as hawks in Washington might see it) by aggression, but insecurity. What we might see as Chinese aggression towards Taiwan may to the Chinese be a product of insecurity. That raises a fundamental question: is China a ‘revisionist power’ (as it is often labelled) or is it an insecure power?
This question has important policy consequences for how the US must approach China in its foreign policy. There is a trendy argument, recently espoused by Robert O’Brian — former National Security Advisor under Trump — that Trump’s style of aggressive and volatile foreign policy is beneficial, because it helps to deter adversaries. However, this logic only makes sense if one believes that the adversary is being driven purely by greed. If, in actuality, the adversary is motivated by insecurity then aggression — or efforts to explicitly increase the US’s military capabilities (say, in the South China Sea) — will be seen as an act of escalation rather than deterrence.
In the case of China, its peculiar position of being a superpower whilst still in the process of securing what it views as ‘its territory, there is thus a heightened risk of a ‘security dilemma’: whereby everything the US does to increase its security leaves China feeling vulnerable and thereby lashing out. Before you know it, an escalation cycle is created. Right or wrong, China might view the South China Sea just as the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed America’s sphere of influence in the Caribbean.
That is not to say the US should not work on its own security against China, domestically and internationally, but rather that it must be careful about the manner in which it goes about it. China’s recent continental empire makes it especially vulnerable, and therefore especially dangerous.