Notes

This is honestly an offensive realism K

If you win the hostile rise debate on either DA you control the framing of what china
is, this helps especially if you read china cheats because it feeds the idea that china
cannot truly be a responsible stakeholder
Key Tenets of Offensive Realism
- All states are rational (can hurt or help you)
o Helps: they will do their own interest
o Hurts: They wont go insane
- We can never assume states do
o Good
Cant assume they will comply
o Bad
Cant assume they wont comply
-
- Appeasement a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power
in order to avoid conflict. In simpler terms, to give an enemy something they want to encourage
them to behave in a way you want them to behave.
-
- Containment a military strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy by surrounding them and/or
scaring them into stopping any behavior. Originally in reference to the Cold War, the United States
decided to develop relationships that would surround the Soviet Union.
-
- Engagement the phrase in the topic. This disad wants to say that the aff gives China something
they want.
-
- Hegemony U.S. leadership. When one country dominates the global order. The disad argues that
the U.S. should continue to dominate and provide security guarantees to our allies.
-
- Proliferation The spread of something. Most commonly, nuclear weapons. IN this instance,
allies/friends who dont have nuclear weapons decide to develop them.
1ncs
 1nc regular
Chinas a predator state bent on territorial expansion this causes war if left
unchecked
Mulgan 16 - professor of Japanese Politics, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force
Academy, Canberra, Australia (Aurelia, Chinas Rise as a Predator State, The Diplomat, 3/9,
http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/chinas-rise-as-a-predator-state//AK)
Chinas land grab and subsequent militarization of islands in the South China Sea have finally dispelled the myth that its rise
will be peaceful. Indeed, these developments point to an unwelcome fact that China has become a predator state. Rands Michael Mazarr wrote about
predator states in the late 1990s. He argues that what distinguishes a predator state above all is territorial aggression the predisposition to
grab territory and resources. China is one of two contemporary examples; the other is Russia in Europe. The best historical examples are Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and
Predator states are buoyed by an expansionist ideology
more recently Iraq under Saddam Hussein. These examples teach us that predator states cause wars.

the active promotion of the idea that neighbouring territories (both land and maritime) belong by rights to
the predator. Such states often possess a sense of historical grievance or victimization that can only be righted by territorial grabs. Indeed, a Mazarr contends, the politics of memory
operates powerfullycausing [predator states] to react by forming aggressive, predatory instincts. Besides territorial aggression, predator states exhibit several other distinguishing features. First,
national policy demonstrates very high levels of militarization. Predator states divert large quantities of national resources into military expansion for
purposes of power projection. The emphasis in military planning and weapons acquisitions is inherently offensive rather than

defensive and is geared to intimidating potential adversaries and winning offensive wars. The flipside domestically is, as Mazarr writes, that military, nationalistic, and territorial issues continue
to play a large role in domestic politics and in the states approach to the world. In Chinas case, nationalism has overtaken Marxism and more recently

developmentalism as state ideology. Second, predator states adopt a strongly strategic perspective on national advancement and display an associated willingness to use all the institutions
and instruments of the state over which they maintain control economic, cultural, military, technological, resource, trade, legal, media in the pursuit of this overwhelming important strategic
objective. China, for example, deployed a broad range of retaliatory instruments against Japan over the Senkaku Islands affair in 2010, including restricting the export of rare earth metals. The use of
such strategic instruments extends beyond such punitive acts of state retaliation to a whole range of long-term, so-called market-based investments. These include foreign acquisitions in strategically
important and sensitive areas such as land, resource and water assets and critical infrastructure as well as in private-sector developments and industries. The strategic element cannot be discounted in
these acquisitions because the line between private enterprise and state-owned enterprises in the Chinese case is imprecise given the complex interweaving of business and state actors. In the end,
everything becomes strategic in the sense of supporting national advancement and security. Third, predator states are not democracies where there exist checks and balances and other moderating
influences that negate the potential for predation against other states. Predator states have authoritarian governments with low levels of accountability. Political leaders are only answerable to other
power cliques and display a willingness to engage in political repression, including imprisonment and even murder of their opponents. In such states, there is no real separation of the executive from the
judiciary and, in that sense, no rule of law. Levels of domestic lawlessness are matched by international lawlessness. Predator states do not respond to appeals to international laws or norms because they
Chinas actions in the South China Sea clearly
are inherently lawless themselves they understand and respect only power in international affairs.

demonstrate that it does not support a rules-based regional or global order; nor does it believe that you can fight power with rules as other
states are attempting to do in dealing with this issue. Finally, predator states show a predisposition to act unilaterally rather than multilaterally. Multilateral cooperation is entertained only where it fits
with the long-term strategic interests of the state. Moreover, there is little willingness to trade off state interests for larger collective interests in the international community. In that sense,
predator states are not interested in providing international public goods and should not be considered as
potentially benign hegemons. How should other states deal effectively with predator states? First of all, they need to recognize what they are dealing with and react accordingly.
Predator states demand tough responses starting with vigilance, deterrence and containment. At the very least there must be
reinforcement of surveillance regimes, the formation of counterbalancing coalitions, and a willingness to act across a whole range of spheres military, economic, financial, trade and diplomatic so
that predator states actions are not cost-free. Other states must also accept that doing nothing is not an option. This only invites further provocation, which
increases the risk of serious conflict .

The US is shifting from engagement to enhanced balancing based upon the

perception of the China threat thats key to sustaining US primacy
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
A second strain of enhanced balancing sees the imperative of a strengthened military posture in Asia as part of a larger project of preserving the postwar liberal economic and security order. Concerned
Kagan and Robert Lieber regard
with more than just the traditional concept of strategic competition that preoccupies realists like Friedberg, neoconservative thinkers such as Robert

a more robust containment of China as key to reasserting America's global leadership. Diverging from the popular
declinist narrative of waning U.S. power in an age of austerity, they believe the country's advantages in size, population, demography, and resources augur an American renaissance, one that can only be
derailed by irresoluteness. The course of modified retrenchment pursued by the Obama administration, in this view, amounts to a misreading of America's power potential. Without vigorous American
engagement abroad, the U.S.-led global order responsible for unprecedented peace and prosperity will gradually wither away, as authoritarian states like China and Russia, with no stake in sustaining a set
of rules and institutions they had no hand in creating, step to the fore. International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition, Kagan writes. It is the domination of one vision over othersin this
case, the domination of liberal principlesover other, non-liberal principles. A shift away from an American-dominated world to multipolarity
would likely yield chaos and conflict, as China, among others, moved to carve out its own sphere of influence and pursue economic autarky. Rather than
accommodate a revisionist China, the United States needs to contain it by working for political change in Beijing, increasing
military capabilities in the region, and shoring up alliances. As with confrontation, the adoption of enhanced balancing
faces substantial hurdles. Robust internationalism is currently out of favor with a majority of Americans, who
consistently express a wish for national leaders to focus on domestic reform and economic recovery. This anti-interventionist sentiment, which no administration can wish away, shows no sign of
dissipating anytime soon and will most likely endure as long as the country suffers the aftereffects of the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression. If, as some commentators
maintain, America has entered a new era of austerityone marked by stifling partisanship in Washington, resource constraints, and a dwindling share of the pie for defense expendituresthe political
Nor is there any indication that the United States will soon
and economic capacity required for a sturdy response to China's ascent will be in short supply.

have ideal strategic leeway for focusing on China; hopes for a lighter footprint in the Middle East and Europe, which the Obama administration viewed as a
prerequisite for the rebalancing to Asia, have been repeatedly dashed and persistent turmoil in those regions will serve as the most likely spoiler to deeper engagement across the Pacific. Moreover, while
enhanced balancing would sharply escalate tensions with
not a radical policy option like confrontation requiring a shocking catalyst for adoption,

Beijing and close off many avenues for interaction, a grim outcome that any administration would have to
weigh against perceived benefits. Yet it is not at all inconceivable to envision a future administration taking such
a risk. Indeed, while dismissed by some enhanced balancers as hollow, the rebalancing to Asia announced by Obama in November 2011 amounted to a tacit
recognition that an increasingly assertive China required tipping the scales in favor of containment. Should the
PRC's regional ambitions continue growing in tandem with its capabilities and influence, as seems likely, this trend will continue. Both in
terms of its intentions, which remain murky and therefore open to alarmist interpretations, and its military and economic capacities, which most in Washington see as expanding, China is increasingly
regarded as an adversarial actor. Historic practice, economic recovery, and maneuvering by political elites at home could guide America's China policy in a firmer direction over time. By tradition, the
United States has not tolerated the emergence of peer competitors. Since its ascendance to world power status at the end of the nineteenth century, it has not shied away from countering authoritarian
states (Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union) that aspired to regional preponderance. Should China press its various sovereignty claims with greater vigor and
While a fiscally and politically hobbled America
steadily work to limit U.S. operations in the Western Pacific, enhanced balancing will gain more converts.

unable to defend its far-flung interests is a distinct possibility in the future, so too is one that is economically
rejuvenated, whose proven capacity for self-correction and inbuilt advantages in resources, competitiveness, and scientific research and technology are augmented by the attainment of energy
independence. With the wind in its sails, an empowered America might be unable to resist the temptation to restrain China by

flexing its muscles via a military build-up in East Asia. In a heated political climate that has often been
conducive to threat inflation, America's party leaders may come to see advantage in calling for a
mobilization of greater resources to counter China. The Cold War, fueled and sustained for so long by the efforts of Republicans to brand their opponents as
soft on communism and the defensive attempts by Democrats to burnish their anti-Soviet credentials, serves as an informative precedent. American voters, many of whom have long

blamed job losses and trade deficits on unfair Chinese economic practices, might eventually be swayed by an alarmist narrative portraying

the PRC as a threat to U.S. security. Indeed, the containment of China could potentially serve as a useful, much
needed catalyst for clarifying America's global role by harmonizing the two political parties foreign
policy agendas, which have been at loggerheads since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Pursuing greater engagement creates political divisions that block enhanced

balancing and undermine primacy
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
While eschewing the radical tactics of confrontationists, enhanced balancers also believe that Sino-American
relations are captive to conflict-inducing structural forces and call for a more robust U.S. posture in the Asia
Pacific to check China's ambitions. Yet unlike confrontationists, who argue that a state's polity is irrelevant to the foreign policy it pursues, enhanced balancers stress that the threat posed by the
mainland is magnified by its authoritarianism. The United States could acquiesce to a democratic China assuming the dominant role in East Asia, according to this school of thought, as it would be less
leading enhanced
prone to aggression and viewed less menacingly by its neighbors. With prospects for such a democratic transition decidedly low for the foreseeable future, however,

balancers such as political scientist Aaron Friedberg believe that the adversarial components of the Sino-American relationship
are overtaking incentives for cooperation. By pursuing engagement out of the nave belief that this will
moderate Chinese behavior, Washington has been asleep at the wheel and is losing ground to a savvier
Beijing in the struggle for regional leadership that is already under way. Enhanced balancing draws on an antagonistic
reading of Chinese intentions. While agreeing with most China watchers that the PRC has largely sought to lower tensions with its
neighbors and America to foster the stable international environment required for domestic stability and economic growth, Friedberg also sees a sleight-of-hand

strategy at work that ultimately aims to supplant the U.S. as the AsiaPacific's hegemon. Beijing realizes
this cannot be achieved by conventional means of conquest. It focuses instead on winning without fighting:
muting America's response to its growing power, sowing doubts of U.S. reliability among its regional allies, and developing anti-access/area denial technology that will restrict the ability of U.S. forces
If Washington cannot adequately respond to this challenge
to operate near China's coasts by placing its Asian bases within range of Chinese missiles.

because of its political paralysis and fiscal constraints, Friedberg darkly warns, the military balance in the Western Pacific will tilt
in favor of Beijing, leaving its neighbors no other choice but to accommodate its wishes. Such an outcome would be at variance with America's historic interest in blocking an adversarial
power from gaining preponderance at either end of the Eurasian continent.

Loss of great power competition with China risks global war

Cohen, 13 - directs the Strategic Studies program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies (Elliot, American Withdrawal and Global Disorder Wall Street Journal, 3/19,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324196204578300262454939952
an assertive China has bullied the
In Mr. Obama's second term the limits of such withdrawal from conventional military commitments abroad will be tested. In East Asia,

Philippines (with which the U.S. has a 61-year-old defense pact) over the Spratly islands, and China has pressed its claims on Japan (a 53-year-old defense pact) over
the Senkaku Islands. At stake are territorial waters and mineral resourcessymbols of China's drive for hegemony and

an outburst of national egotism. Yet when Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister of an understandably anxious Japan, traveled to Washington in February, he didn't get the
unambiguous White House backing of Japan's sovereignty that an ally of long standing deserves and needs. In Europe, an oil-rich Russia is rebuilding its

conventional arsenal while modernizing (as have China and Pakistan) its nuclear arsenal. Russia has been menacing its East European neighbors,
including those, like Poland, that have offered to host elements of a NATO missile-defense system to protect Europe. In 2012, Russia's then-chief of general staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, declared: "A
decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens." This would be the same Russia that has attempted to dismember its neighbor Georgia and now has a docile
Russophile billionaire, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, to supplant the balky, independence-minded government loyal to President Mikhail Saakashvili. In the Persian Gulf, American policy was laid
down by Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address with what became the Carter Doctrine: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an
America's Gulf allies may not have
assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

treaties to rely uponbut they do have decades of promises and the evidence of two wars that the U.S. would stand by them . Today they wait for the
long-promised (by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush) nuclear disarmament of a revolutionary Iranian government that has been relentless in its efforts to intimidate and subvert Iran's neighbors.
Americans take for granted the world in which they grew upa world in which, for better or worse, the U.S. was the
They may wait in vain.

ultimate security guarantor of scores of states, and in many ways the entire international system. Today we are informed by many politicians and
commentators that we are weary of those burdensthough what we should be weary of, given that our children aren't conscripted and our taxes aren't being raised in order to pay for those wars, is
unclear. The truth is that defense spending at the rate of 4% of gross domestic product (less than that sustained with ease by Singapore) is eminently affordable. The arguments against far-flung
American strategic commitments take many forms. So-called foreign policy realists, particularly in the academic world, believe that the competing interests of states tend automatically toward balance
and require no statesmanlike action by the U.S. To them, the old language of force in international politics has become as obsolete as that of the "code duello," which regulated individual honor fights
through the early 19th century. We hear that international institutions and agreements can replace national strength. It is also saidcovertly but significantlythat the U.S. is too dumb and inept to play
the role of security guarantor. Perhaps the clever political scientists, complacent humanists, Spenglerian declinists, right and left neo-isolationists, and simple doubters that the U.S. can do anything right
are correct. Perhaps the president should concentrate on nation-building at home while pressing abroad only for climate-change agreements, nuclear disarmament and an unfettered right to pick off bad
guys (including Americans) as he sees fit. But if history is any guide, foreign policy as a political-science field experiment or what-me-worryism will
yield some ugly results. Syria is a harbinger of things to come. In that case, the dislocation, torture and death have first afflicted the locals. But it will not
end there, as incidents on Syria's borders and rumors of the movement of chemical weapons suggest. A world in which the U.S. abnegates its leadership will

be a world of unrestricted self-help in which China sets the rules of politics and trade in Asia, mayhem and chaos is
the order of the day in the Middle East, and timidity and appeasement paralyze freeze the free European
states. A world, in short, where the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must, and those with an
option hurry up and get nuclear weapons.
2NC Topshelf- Appeasemnt
 2NC Overview If topping is read
If we win that offensive realism is the dominant Chinese IR paradigm we can lose
every other argument in this debate simply because you have to be very skeptical
about their solvency claims because there would be no reason as to why china
would give their part of the QPQ if it means they can maintain regional
hegemony. Our topping evidence indicates that Chinese experts because of the
ultra-nationalism Xi has brought, conflict will be inevitable between the US and
China. US engagement with China causes there to be a loss of US primacy our
lumbers evidence from the 1n says that the idea of engagement to moderate
Chinese behavior itself is a nave concept and lets china win without fighting.
That leads to China being more assertive and would risk global war because
china would be the leader in the east thats 1nc cohen. This turns case because
its a solvency take out to the affirmative, if we win Hostile rise the 1AR/2AR has
to win not only that china would be a responsible stake holder but also that china
isnt an offensive realist.
 2NC Turns US China relations

Successful China balancing in defense of American primacy outweighs all the things
Tellis, 14Ashley, senior associate @ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, PhD from U
Chicago, former special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest
Asia at the National Security Council. Balancing Without Containment, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace PDF report, Jan 22,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/balancing_without_containment.pdf, p. 3-9 br
This transition will not occur automatically if Chinas GNP one day exceeds that of the United States. Rather,
the threat of supersession will be more gradual as continuing Chinese economic growthat levels superior to the expansion
occurring in the United States steadily enables Beijing to acquire all the other accoutrements that make for comprehensive

national power. On current trends, China will consistently accumulate these capabilities over the next two
decades. It certainly aims to do so, at the latest, by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China and the date by which Chinese President Xi Jinping has declared
Chinas intention to become a fully developed nation. Acquiring the appropriate foundations of power will position China to achieve,

first, strategic equivalence with the United States, thus transforming the international system into a
meaningfully bipolar order. Then, depending on Beijings own fortunes, China may possibly surpass
Washington as the center of gravity in international politics. Irrespective of which outcome occursor
wheneither eventuality would by definition signal the demise of the primacy that the United States has
enjoyed since the end of the Second World War. Even if during this process a power transition in the strict vocabulary of realist international relations theory is
avoideda possibility because Chinas per capita income will lag behind that of the United States for a long time even if it acquires the worlds largest GNPBeijings capacity to

challenge Washingtons interests in multiple arenas, ranging from geopolitics to trade and from advancing
human rights to protecting the commons, will only increase as its power expands. In other words, China will demonstrate how a rival
can, as Thomas J. Christensen phrased it, [pose] problems without catching up.8 <end page 3> As Avery Goldstein has persuasively argued, these hazards could

materialize rather quickly because China is currently pursuing provocative policies on territorial disputes
over islands in the East and South China Seas.9 That these disputes, which a former U.S. official described as involving uninhabited and uninhabitable rocks,10
do not appear prima facie to implicate a systemic crisis should not be reassuring to the United States because every serious contestation that occurs in future

Sino-American relations will materialize against the backdrop of a possible power transition so long as
Chinas growth rateseven when diminishingcontinue to exceed those of the United States. This dynamic,
as William R. Thompson has pointed out, can produce extended crisis slides in which even relatively trivial incidents or a

string of seemingly minor crises may suffice to escalate what was up to that point a precarious structural
transformation into full-fledged geopolitical polarization and major war.11 Since the relative disparity in Sino-American economic
performance is likely to persist for quite some time, even trifling quarrels will push bilateral ties ever more concertedly in the

direction of greater abrasion as accumulating Chinese power further constrains U.S. freedom of action. AN
UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE In many ways, the challenge posed by China will be more serious than that posed by the

previous American competitorthe Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union was indeed a formidable military power, its economic base was always much smaller
than that of the United States. Although insufficiently appreciated during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was actually a deformed entity: a military

giant possessing coercive capabilities that rivaled the United States but an economic midget nurturing a
productive base that was less than half the size of its avowed competitor.12 Angus Maddison, for example, has estimated that the gross
domestic product (GDP) of the Soviet Union, when at the height of its relative power in 1975, was approximately 44.4 percent of that of the United States in the same year. China does not

share this weakness, which makes the dangers posed by its ascent and the prospect that it will one day
acquire genuinely comprehensive power rivaling that of the United Statesfar more problematic. Furthermore, Chinas
central location within the larger concentration of Asian economic powerthe fastest-growing hub in the international systemendows its growth with even greater significance. There is a risk that
Beijing might someday exercise choking control over this critical geopolitical space and thereby endanger larger American and global security.13 Today, even before China has completely risen, it is
already committed to the objective of enforcing a strict hierarchy in Asia, meaning that Beijings position at the top of the continental order is acknowledged and respected by all its neighbors. As
Chinese strategy for securing such primacy has revolved around translating <END PAGE 4> the
Franois Godement has pointed out,

massive economic gains it has made in recent years into a geopolitical approach that emphasizes coercion without force.14 Even
more astutely, Christopher Ford has noted that the thorough submission of other countries that China seeks is meant to be voluntary that is, these countries would be expected not to have to be
forced to comply, but rather spontaneously to choose to take their place within the status-hierarchy under the benevolent guidance of the virtuous leader.15 This is the only explanation that does
justice to then Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechis outburst at the 2010 meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations when, staring directly at Singapores then foreign minister, George Yeo,
he bluntly declared that China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and thats just a fact.16 Just in case Beijings neighbors do not get the message, however, China has begun to put
in place the foundations for enforcing its own version of the Monroe Doctrine along its various peripheries. Beginning with cartographic aggression17 through claims such as its 9-dash line in the
South China Sea and its expansive assertions along the Sino-Indian border to further efforts at national enclosure18 through its recently expanded air defense identification zone in the East China Sea
China is systematically laying the foundations to ensure that its
to mounting the worlds biggest military expansion 19 for several years running,

neighbors acquiesce to its burgeoning hegemony while simultaneously ensuring their isolation vis--vis their
most important external protector, namely the United States. To be sure, China does not yet pose the kind of military threats to Asia that the Soviet
Union posed to Europe in its heyday. This condition, however, may not last for long given that Chinas relations with its neighbors are troubled in many ways. Disputes over

continental and maritime boundaries persist, status rivalries between China and its Asian peers have not
disappeared, and Beijing has, at least so far, studiously refused to renounce the use of force in resolving
geopolitical disagreements at a time when its own capacity to mount significant standoff attacks on adjacent
countries is rapidly growing. Consequently, however remote the prospect may seem at present, the United States could find itself in a conflict with China in the future thanks to
its extended deterrence obligations to various Asian nations. Conflicts between China and its neighbors that do not directly involve the United States but nevertheless affect U.S. interests are also
possible. On balance, both these contingencies have inevitably impelled China to expand and rapidly accelerate improvements in [its] military and economic capabilities as well as increase its
external influence to simultaneously establish political and economic dominance over the periphery [in order to] provide leverage against future great power pressure.20 And these developments, all
The specific location of Chinas military
told, will almost automatically accentuate regional security dilemmas vis--vis both Chinas neighbors and the United States.

capabilities makes this danger to the Asian theater especially problematic. The Soviet Unions air and land lines of communication to its
Asian peripheries were long, tenuous, and relatively underdeveloped, which made the sustainability <END PAGE 5> of Soviet military forces in the Far East a challenging proposition. Soviet combat
power adjacent to the Pacific, however significant in absolute terms, was considerably weaker than its equivalent in Europe. China, by contrast, is highly advantaged on both counts. It can threaten all
the major regional states located along both its continental and maritime peripheries through highly robust, and rapidly improving, interior lines of communication. Furthermore, the bulk of its military
capabilities are either directly deployed along its eastern seaboard or can be swiftly moved to any one of its strategic peripheries. Thus, by comparison to the Soviet Union, China can more easily
overawe the major power centers in the Indo-Pacific while at the same time more effectively preventing the United States from bringing rearward reinforcements to bear in defense of its regional
allies.21 All these realitiesbeing a continental-sized power, possessing a gigantic and technologically improving
economy, enjoying superior rates of relative economic growth, having a strategically advantageous location,
and rapidly acquiring formidable military capabilities add up quickly to make China a far more
consequential rival to the United States than any Washington has faced in the past. Although U.S.
officials are bashful about describing China plainly as a geopolitical threat, there is little doubt that they
recognize the possibility of a coming power transition, with all its attendant dangers. Because of the perennial arguments among
liberals, realists, and neoconservatives, there is no agreement in Washington about what the implications of this transition might be. Yet it is precisely this contingency

that U.S. grand strategy should aim to thwart because American primacy has been beneficial for the
international system and, even more importantly, for the United States itself. Preserving this preeminence,
accordingly, remains the central task for U.S. policymakers today. Devising a strategy that is equal to this
responsibility must begin with an acknowledgment of both the significance and the complexity of the
challenge given Chinas deep enmeshment with the world. There is no better way to begin this assessment
than by recognizing that globalization in the postwar period has spawned uneven gains that have produced in
China a new competitor to the United States. This most recent bout of international integration has been
reinvigorated and nurtured by American hegemony, understood simply as possessing more comprehensive
power than any other state and being willing to use that power to structure the global order in certain ways.
Beijings continuing ascent in these circumstances creates a difficult dilemma for Washington: unlike previous great powers that rose largely through autarkic means, China has grown rapidly because it
has benefited disproportionately from American investments in sustaining a liberal international economic order. China, admittedly, is not alone in this regard. Many other European and Asian states
have enjoyed economic revitalization in the postwar period because of their integration into the multilateral trading system underwritten by American power. But China has experienced
disproportionately greater gains than the United States and others because its native comparative advantages have been magnified through three distinctive policies. First, Beijing has opted to maintain a
domestic economy characterized by significant protectionist components even as it has pursued an investment-driven, export-led growth strategy that exploits the free access available to the more open
economies of the developed world.22 Second, the dominant role of the Chinese state in economic decisionmaking has permitted the government to control critical factors of production, such as land
and capital, maintain advantageous exchange rates, and sustain huge state-owned enterprises, which in their totality have enabled China to advance nationalist aims beyond simply allocative efficiency
and the increased welfare of its population.23 And third, the consistent and systematic targeting of foreign intellectual property on a gigantic scale has advanced Chinas industrial policy goals, which
emphasize the speedy acquisition of advanced technologies by both legitimate and illegitimate means in order to accelerate Chinese growth vis--vis other rivals in the international system.24 All these
elements operating in unison have raised Chinas level of development, which in turn has helped increase American welfare through tradebut at the cost of embodying a rising challenge to U.S.
it is by no means inevitable that China will continue to rise to the point where it becomes a
power. However,

genuine peer competitor of the United States. Although China has experienced meteoric economic growth in recent decades, the Chinese state has manifold
weaknesses. It grapples with the prospect of adverse demographic transitions, contradictions between Beijings command polity and pseudo-liberal economy, and an unbalanced growth strategy that
emphasizes overinvestment at the cost of domestic consumption. These weaknesses may yet take their toll, leading to either a collapse of Chinas hitherto relentless expansion or its severe
moderation.25 The evidence indicates that Chinas leaders are acutely aware of the precarious character of the nations economic achievements thus far. Given their own problematic legitimacy, there is
no doubt that they are deeplyeven fearfullyconcerned about the survival of Chinas Communist regime in the context of the rising threats to domestic stability. Given the growing internal
inequalities along multiple dimensions, the rampant corruption throughout society (and especially among the elites), and the increasing individuation in the prospering middle classes, Chinas leaders
remain obsessed by the dangers of internal chaos. They understand that they might not be able to satisfy the rising expectations of their now highly informed and restive population. The decisions
reached during the recent third plenum of the 18th Party Congress indicate that the Xi Jinping regime remains intently focused on confronting the countrys myriad economic problems head-on both in
order to sustain Chinas global rise and to ward off any indigenous threats to Communist control within China.26 However, the Xi regime remains reluctant to face up to the need for constitutional
political liberalization, which raises questions about whether its policies (or any similar policies followed by its successors) will indeed satisfactorily dissipate the dangers of domestic instability. On this
score, only time will tell. But the reality of Chinas internal troubleswhich undoubtedly are considerablehas often strengthened the belief that its rise as a great power will not prove as troublesome
to others as might be ordinarily expected. According to this line of thought, Chinas domestic challenges will prevent its leaders from pursuing those self-regarding policies that have been prosecuted by
all other great powers in history.27 There is no doubt that if the Chinese economy falters badly and for a substantial period of time or the Chinese state is gripped by a cataclysmic crisisfor whatever
reasonthe growing challenge to American hegemony would be attenuated. But absent such calamitous developments, it is unlikely that the weight of Chinas internal challenges alone will prevent its
leaders from pursuing those willful policies that would seem natural to Beijing as its power continues to grow. After all, elevated levels of Chinese assertiveness, which have been on display since the
20072008 global financial crisis, have occurred despite persistent domestic restiveness for over five years now. Moreover, internal problems have not prevented the Chinese state from successfully
extracting the necessary resources to sustain a dramatic military modernization over a long period of time. Nor have they prevented recent Chinese leaders from steadily disregarding Deng Xiaopings
old counsel to hide and bide in favor of a new belligerence that takes the form of show and go. In fact, Beijing has been able to harness popular sentiments to support its increasingly abrasive
the United States cannot count on the possibility that China might stumble
foreign policies in the Indo-Pacific region. Given this reality,

in any fundamental sense. Nor can it assume that Chinas relatively higher growth rates will naturally decay
well before Beijing acquires sufficient comprehensive power to become a consequential rival. Washington
also cannot presume that its own national capabilities writ large will always remain more powerful or more
fecund than Chinas. Still less can it count on the prospect of Chinese oppugnancy vanishing merely because Chinese growth rates threaten to ease up somewhat in the future. After all,
as Moscow did in years past, Beijing could still pose a major threat to U.S. interests despite possessing a smaller economy or experiencing slower economic growth. Because China alone

among all other emerging powers has the potential to displace the United States at the top of the international
hierarchy, Washington confronts the necessity of consciously developing a grand strategy that limits Beijings
ability to erode overall U.S. preeminence. This corrective strategy needs to be developed now, while
China is still some distance away from being able to effectively challenge the United States, or else it risks
being too late. Chinas deep integration with the international economy, however, implies that the containment strategies that worked so effectively against the Soviet Union cannot be
successfully replicated today. Consequently, if Washington is to escape from the Scylla of paralyzing helplessness in the face of Chinas rise and the Charybdis of inveterate opposition to that

ascent, it must embark on a novel course of action that can be best described as balancing without containment. This report lays
out the logic of such a strategy, focusing not so much on the current crises enveloping China and the United States but rather on the structural quandaries created by Beijings continuing rise. It begins
by reviewing why Chinas rise is unique in modern history and examines the specific predicament posed by Chinas ascendancy to the United States. Thereafter, it elucidates the imperative of balancing
China, given that other alternatives such as containment are not options that can be easily exercised by Washington at the present time. Finally, it develops the outlines of a strategy that the United
States should pursue toward China, an approach that preserves the benefits of economic interdependence while limiting the dangers of a Chinese exploitation of its growing power.

The combination of nationalism and authoritarianism makes China inherently more

war prone than the US
Coker 15- Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Head of
Department (Christopher, The Improbable War, 15 January 2015, Oxford University Press, pp.4)//SL
However, given the logic of competition, I am convinced that China poses a greater threat to world peace than the United States
because democratic societies are more accountable than non-democratic societies. The United States is a status quo
power whose instincts, though they may often lead to war and conflict, are not necessarily belligerent . The same

does not apply in the case of China. Nationalism is already proving to be a dangerous force in Chinese
politics, and the militarys relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gives cause for concern. Perhaps
the most disturbing aspect of Chinas rise, remarks the dissident Liu Xiaobo, is its almost pathological need to overtake the West. Yet wars are not always the product of

ambition or malice, but often result from miscalculation. They occur because plans back- fire or because schemes are foiled by chance. When the (un)usual
outliersthe events and personalities that cannot be factored into any accountare also considered, then it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that politics and war are often very illogical.

Nationalism guarantees quick, great power escalation

Tellis, 14Ashley, senior associate @ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, PhD from U
Chicago, former special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest
Asia at the National Security Council. Balancing Without Containment, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace PDF report, Jan 22,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/balancing_without_containment.pdf, p. 17-18 br
Beijings ascent to global hegemony, first as a rival and then as a primate, could also pose an especially
Finally,

concerted threat to American interests because it may intensify the upsurge in Chinese nationalism. If the
last two decades of Chinese growth have corroborated anything, it is that expanding economic power
invariably stimulates various kinds of national awakenings, including those of the virulent variety. Western states that
were once rising powers themselves are familiar with this phenomenon, which they often forget at their peril.45 Not surprisingly, then, Chinas growing economic clout

has already been accompanied by an unhealthy nationalism stimulated at different times by its media, its
increasingly confident middle classes, its new netizen community, or sometimes even by the state itself.46 These
entities have boosted Chinese aggressiveness in recent years, which has been manifested in seizures of disputed territories or threats of punishment directed toward traditional rivals. The availability of
new resources has empowered Beijing to pursue coercive actions that were previously considered out of reach or excessively risky, and either new social forces within the state or the aroused citizenry
has legitimized these actions. This development effectively refutes the widespread expectation that Chinas economic growth, deriving as it did from interdependence instead of from the autarkic means
that have led to the rise of other great powers, would produce a more pacific and cosmopolitan population focused on securing self-government at home rather than the expansion of national influence
abroad. The likelihood that such pernicious nationalism would be aggravated even after China becomes either a
peer of the United States or the most powerful state in international politics is great for three different, but
mutually reinforcing, reasons. First, if the Chinese Communist Party survives at the helm, its problems of
legitimacy could compel itas is the case todayto excite Chinese nationalism whenever it senses serious
threats to its survival or its hold on power.47 Second, the deeply etched memory of Chinas century of
humiliation at the hands of foreign invaders ensures that a rising Beijing would be strongly motivated to
prevent any loss of power. As a result, it would utilize all forms of political mobilization to bolster its strength
in hopes of warding off any return to weakness that might spawn fresh indignities.48 Third, a powerful China
would quickly discover that it remains surrounded by various challengers, some of whom may be capable of
growing at even faster rates over time. Coping with these unending threats would charge Chinese nationalism further, in part because the major competitors along the
countrys immediate peripheryRussia, India, and Japan, not to mention the United Statesare also significant powers with proud histories and their own unique chauvinisms. 49 The

persistence of Chinese nationalism, then, will likely intensify the threats Beijing levies on Washington and its
allies beyond what is inevitable due to the normal jostling of great-power competition.

China Rise threatens US security in East Asia Guarantees escalation of Conflict

once China reaches regional Hegemony
Ross 13 - Professor of political science at Boston College, Associate of the Fairbank Center
for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, Senior advisor of the security studies program at
MIT, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, One of the foremost American
specialists on Chinese foreign and defense policy and U.S.-China relations (Robert, US
grand strategy, the rise of China, and US national security strategy for East Asia, Strategic
Studies Quarterly, http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/summer_2013/ross.pdf//AK)
The rise of China poses a challenge to US security in East Asia because, unless balanced, China could achieve regional
hegemony. This could occur regardless of Chinese intentions and policies. Given the historical pattern of great-power politics, once China possesses the capabilities
to challenge the regional order, it will presumably seek a dominant strategic position throughout East Asia.
This has been the European experience, repeated many times over the past 500 years and often characterized by war. It has also been
the experience in the Western Hemisphere since 1823, when the United States proclaimed its regional ambitions in the Monroe Doctrine. And it has been the recent experience in South Asia, where
Great powers in search of security seek a
only Pakistans possession of nuclear weapons has prevented India from achieving dominance throughout the subcontinent.

region-wide sphere of influence. Should China have similar aspirations, it would be neither good nor bad nor reflect hostility toward the United States; it would
simply reject great-power politics. On the other hand, even should China not have aspirations for regional leadership, it will emerge as the regional
hegemon unless its rise is balanced by another great power. Local powers, responding to Chinas growing advantage in the balance of capabilities in the
region, will gravitate toward it rather than risk its hostility. In the absence of balancing, the rise of China will challenge a cornerstone of US security

a divided rank across the Pacific Ocean. The United States requires sufficient military and political presence in
East Asia to balance the rise of China and to deter it from using force to achieve regional hegemony, should it become
frustrated at the pace of change. US strength will also reassure local powers that their security does not require accommodation to Chinas rise.15 The

optimal US grand strategy for East Asia will secure balance-of- power objectives at the least possible cost to US blood, treasure, and
honor. To do otherwise would divert scarce strategic resources from capabilities and missions that would better serve US security elsewhere and would undermine achievement of critical nonstrategic
Balancing Chinas rise at the least possible cost will require continual
objectives, including economic development and social welfare.

modernization of US capabilities while managing US-China relations to avoid unnecessary yet costly conflict. The former is a
military challenge; the latter is a political challenge. The United States requires sufficient military capability in East Asia to deter China from using force to
realize its strategic ambitions and to reassure US security partners that they can rely on the United States to provide for their security against a rising China. This is how to maintain the balance of power
Chinas long-term strategy to challenge US military presence focuses on access-denial capabilities. Rather
in East Asia.

it has developed low-cost, secure platforms

than fund a large power-projection and sea-control naval capability dependent on large and numerous surface ships,

that may challenge the ability of the United States to protect its war-fighting ships, especially aircraft carriers. Chinese exports
primarily focus on the use of relatively quiet and increasingly numerous diesel submarines. By 2000, Chinas submarine force had awakened concern in the US Navy over the wartime survivability of its
surface fleet, especially its carriers. More recently, Chinese research and testing of an anti-ship ballistic missile system and anti-ship cruise missiles deployed on submarines and surface ships
suggest China may eventually pose an even greater challenge to the US fleet. Should Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) develop an
effective intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) targeting capability to inflict critical attacks on US naval assets, it may be able to deter US intervention in

its hostilities with local states or create region-wide doubts that the United States has the resolve to defend their
security at the risk of war.18 If China believes it can deter US intervention, it may be encouraged to use force against
US allies.
 2NC Turns SCS

Balancing deters China in the SCS it solves comparatively better than engagement
Pickrell 15(Ryan, PhD degree in International Politics and Diplomacy, The Tipping Point: Has the U.S.-
China Relationship Passed the Point of No Return?, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-tipping-point-
has-the-us-china-relationship-passed-the-14168?page=3, 10/26/15, NRG)
The situation in the South China Sea has been steadily escalating for several years now. In April, 2014, American defense
secretary Chuck Hagel met with Chinese defense minister Chang Wanquan. During the meeting, Hagel said, All parties should refrain from provocative actions and the use of intimidation, coercion, or
aggression to advance their claims. Such disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law. Chang replied, Id like to reiterate that the territorial sovereignty issue is a
The inability to discuss openly or
Chinese core interest. On this issue, we will make no compromises, no concessions. Not even a tiny bit of violation will be allowed.

compromise on this issue has made it impossible to resolve and has led to escalation and increased tension. In
the aftermath of this meeting, China began investing heavily in island construction and land reclamation activities in disputed waters. As these activities have stirred up a lot of dust in the region, the
United States has demanded that China abandon its present course of action, insisting that it is provocative and negatively impacting regional peace and stability. Not only has China dismissed Americas
demands, it has also increased its military presence in contested areas in order to establish anti-access zones. While China claims that its actions are within the scope of international law, the United
China argues that the South China Sea
States asserts that Chinese actions are in violation of the law of the sea and laws for the regulation of the international commons.

issue is a territorial sovereignty issue, yet the United States regards this issue as a freedom of navigation dispute, as well as a fight for the preservation of the international
legal systema cornerstone for the American-led liberal world order. In August of this year, the United States launched its new Asia-Pacific Maritime

Security Strategy, which aims to safeguard the freedom of the seas, deter conflict and escalation, and promote adherence to international law and standards. The Asia-Pacific region

is now at the heart of the American naval security agenda. In response, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said that China
opposes any countrys attempt to challenge Chinas territorial sovereignty and security under the pretext of safeguarding navigation freedom. Responding to Chinese criticisms of Americas new
regional maritime security strategy, American Defense Secretary Ashton Carter stated, Make no mistake, we will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law permitsWe will do that at times and
places of our choosing. In 2014, the United States carried out freedom of navigation exercises in various parts of the world and challenged the territorial claims of 18 different countries; however,
the United States has yet to officially challenge Chinas claims in the South China Sea. But, that may soon
change, as the United States is currently considering sending American naval vessels within 12 nautical miles
of Chinas artificial islands in order to force China to end its land reclamation activities. Such plans are considered aggressive,
dangerous and extremely provocative by the Chinese. A recent Global Times editorial read, China mustnt tolerate rampant US violations of Chinas adjacent waters and the skies over these expanding
islands. The Chinese military should be ready to launch countermeasures according to Washingtons level of provocation. The article further stated, If the US encroaches on Chinas core interests, the
Chinese military will stand up and use force to stop it. The article stated plainly, If the US adopts an aggressive approach, it will breach Chinas bottom line, and China will not sit idly by. Other
the
reports from this newspaper, a state-sponsored Chinese media outlet, have made it clear that if the bottom line for the United States is that China must end all of its land reclamation activities in

South China Sea, then war is inevitable, which suggests that this issue may be the tipping point for the Sino-American relationship.
How the United States and China choose to move forward on this issue will permanently redefine the
relationship between these two great powers. Granted, this may just be saber rattling, but even if that is the case, this issue is still decidedly
zero-sumwhich increases the likelihood of conflict. For China, political preservation and a potential Chinese sphere of influence are on the line, and
for the United States, the liberal world order and American hegemony are at stake. Sooner or later, this trying
issue will need to be resolved, and regardless of whether it is resolved through diplomacy or military force, it
will take a toll on the geopolitical influence of either one or both countries. Were the international institutions for collective security strong
enough to handle situations like this when they ariseand if China and the United States were willing to establish a new relationship model which addresses each countrys

respective security concerns and encourages effective collaborationit might actually be possible to resolve this issue peacefully. But given current circumstances, this is little more than

idealism and wishful thinking. As there is currently no clear solution to this problem that would allow both countries to walk out of this situation with their heads held high,
these two states are pondering the unthinkable. Depending on each countrys level of commitment and resolve, this situation may have already passed the tipping point. The outcome of the geopolitical
power struggle between China and the United States will almost certainly be decided in the South China Sea. Some have suggested that the South China Sea issue is not a Sino-American issue. On the
One side will either choose to back down or be forced to back down. No matter
contrary, it is the most pressing Sino-American issue.

how everything plays out in the South China Sea, geopolitics in the Asia-Pacific region will never be the same
again.

China rise causes conflict escalation over South China Sea

Barno and Bensahel 16 Barno is a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, and Dr. Nora
Bensahel is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, at the School of International Service at
American University. Both also serve as Nonresident Senior Fellows at the Atlantic Council
(David and Nora, A GUIDE TO STEPPING IT UP IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA,
JUNE 14, 2016, War on the Rocks, http://warontherocks.com/2016/06/a-guide-to-
stepping-it-up-in-the-south-china-sea//AK)
The South China Sea has become one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world as China continues to
aggressively expand its influence and capabilities there. One year ago, we proposed several ways in which the United States could try to deter further Chinese
encroachments. But, as the recent Shangri-La Dialogue demonstrated, tensions in the region have only risen since then. The Chinese have only

accelerated their bellicose behavior, and nothing the United States has done has seemed to have any effect. The
United States and its partners now have no choice but to consider a wider range of more assertive responses. We are not seeking a conflict with China, nor do we advocate a war. We do not believe that
China is an inevitable adversary of the United States. But we are increasingly concerned that Chinese actions in the South China Sea, if left
unopposed, will give it de facto dominance of an area that is a vital strategic interest to the United States. More
direct U.S. actions would involve significant risks but so would failing to act, and those risks are far less appreciated. Why does the South China Sea matter? It is one of the worlds

most important shipping lanes, transited by about one-third of global commercial goods each year. It lies atop at least seven billion barrels of oil and an estimated 900 million
cubic feet of natural gas. Conflicting claims to these important waters abound. These involve several U.S. allies and friends and will likely be

exacerbated by the pending outcome of an international court case between China and the Philippines. Chinese efforts to
establish sovereign claims over these key international waters not only threaten unimpeded access to global
shipping lanes and U.S. partners in the region, but also set a dangerous global precedent. Beijings forceful efforts are intended
to establish regional hegemony by creating a zone of near seas over which it can claim sole control. During the past year, Chinese actions have grown bolder. They have completed

land reclamation efforts at the three largest outposts in the South China Sea and are now focusing on
developing infrastructure. Each one already has an airfield with a 9,800-foot runway, which is long enough to land most military aircraft. They have also landed a military jet on
Fiery Cross Reef and deployed advanced fighters and surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the Paracels. Taken together, these capabilities provide forward-

positioned power projection platforms for Chinese fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance aircraft. Aircraft from these
bases could easily reach and possibly enforce Chinese claims out to the so-called nine-dash line that borders the easternmost rim of the South China Sea. Chinese Navy ships and maritime
militia can also use these outposts as refueling and provisioning stops that extend their sea presence across this vast expanse. U.S. aircraft carriers are at best transient visitors in these same waters, and
no other country in the region can project and sustain the air and naval presence in the South China Sea that these fixed bases now offer. The United States has responded to this continued expansion
with ever stronger warnings and actions. Most notably, the United States conducted its first freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea in October 2015, when a U.S. destroyer
sailed within 12 miles of Subi Reef to demonstrate that the United States rejects any Chinese maritime claims emanating from its artificial islands. At least two other FONOPs have been conducted since
then, and the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, has stated that future FONOPs will increase in number, scope, and complexity. Yet Chinese confrontational
actions are nevertheless continuing and even escalating. In recent months, for example, Chinese fighter jets have flown
dangerously close to U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in both the South and East China Seas, violating an agreement that the United
States and China signed last year on safe conduct in the air. And the Chinese government recently announced that it is
considering establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea as a further signal of its
security claims to this key region. China has subtly but forcefully established a permanent presence across a series of outposts on

territory that did not exist five years ago. This is the new reality of the South China Sea. As a result, the United States and its regional partners now have little choice but to consider a broader and
stronger range of options. These actions should be designed to achieve two primary objectives: to deter China from further expansion and combative behaviors and to better position the United States
and its partners for military action to defend the international commons, if required.
 2NC OV if Topping isnt in the 1NC
(If you dont read topping)
DA OW and turns case US engagement with China causes there to be a loss of US
primacy our lumbers evidence from the 1n says that the idea of engagement to
moderate Chinese behavior itself is a nave concept and lets china win without
fighting. That leads to China being more assertive and would risk global war
because china would be the leader in the east thats 1nc Cohen. If we win the
framing debate i.e. that china operates on offensive realism you have to be very
skeptical of their solvency evidence that china will actually agree with the plan
 2nc hostile rise inevitable (MUST READ)

Hostile rise is inevitable offensive realism is the dominant Chinese IR paradigm

and Xi embraced the prospect of an inevitable confrontation with the US if you
can read this card on case in the 1nc
Topping 15-Military and Strategic Studies Scholar (Vincent, Tracing a Line in the Water: Chinas Anti-
Access/Area-Denial Strategy in the Asia Pacific Region and its Implications for the United States, August
2015, University of Calgary,
http://theses.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/11023/2602/4/ucalgary_2015_topping_vincent.pdf)//SL
For decades, China has kept the same discourse: it is seeking peaceful development, it will never seek hegemony, and security alliances in Asia are a relic of the Cold War that should be discarded.
Nonetheless, in recent years (and especially since the arrival of Xi Jinping as the President of the PRC), there has been an increasingly severe dichotomy between words and actions. Whereas the official
Chinese discourse had long been that China was still a developing country that should not be pushed too hard otherwise it could destroy its social cohesion and enhance the pressure on its domestic
tensions,39 and whereas China had for decades kept Deng Xiaopings motto of keeping a low profile and never seek leadership, now China wants to be recognized as a
leading power in the world and is striving for achievements. Chinese international relations expert and Dean of the International Relations
department at Tsinghua University Yan Xuetong had been preaching since at least 2010 that China and the United States should drop the pretense that

they are partners in this new century and accept that they are competitors that will more often than not have
divergent and conflicting interests.40 After all, according to Yan, Chinas endeavour to regain its historical place as a world
leading power and the United States refusal to relinquish its sole superpower status constitutes their greatest
political conflict. 41 In the words of Alastair Iain Johnston, this is quite an admission about Chinas interests as it goes against every single policy statement and declaratory policy that
China has issued over thirty years.42 This could be disregarded as a Chinese realists perspective who is trying to further his point of view and agenda. However, when Xi Jinping came

to power, he projected his vision of China for the future, which entailed that the country needed to undergo a
national rejuvenation (fuxing zhi lu, ). According to Yan, this is a phrase that literally refers to resuming Chinas historical international status as the worlds most
advanced state in early Tang Dynasty (618-917 AD). Today this phrase specifically refers to Chinas efforts to catch up with the

United States in terms of comprehensive national power [] the competition for international leadership between China and the
United States will be inevitable (emphasis added).43 This also points out to one inconvenient truth about Chinese politics, one that will definitely leave a bitter taste for
American policymakers that have been working tirelessly to socialize China in the international system and who thought liberalism would convert China to the benefits of the current international
order: not only realist (along with ultra-nationalist) thinkers in China are not on the fringe of Chinese politics,
they are very much in the mainstream. 44 International relations theory is still somewhat of a new phenomenon in China, but Chinese experts have
quickly appropriated realism (and especially John J. Mearsheimers version of offensive realism) as one of their own.45 It is now, and has been for
a while, the most dominant paradigm of international relations in China.46 Some theorists in China like Wang Jisi, Dean of the
International Relations department at the prestigious Peking University, have been trying for years to strike a conciliatory note to reconcile differences and

bridge the gap between China and the U.S., but his attempt (and those of likeminded colleagues) to do so is mostly the exception, not the rule.47

Prefer our evidence multiple Chinese actions confirm the hostile rise thesis:

a. Current territorial expansion and the history of great power wars

Marston 16- Works in a major Washington, DC think tank and writes on Southeast Asia and U.S. foreign
policy (Hunter, More Trade Wont Stop Chinas Aggression, June 13, 2016, The National Interest,
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/more-trade-wont-stop-chinas-aggression-16587?page=2)//SL
Chinas brazen and improper airmanship, buzzing an American surveillance plane in the skies above the East China Sea last week, is but the latest
signal of Beijings proclivity for risk and willingness to undermine both its regional reputation and economic
stability in order to stake expanding claims in Asia. Western observers have not relinquished the perennial
hope that Chinas global economic interconnectedness will constrain its proclivity to military conflict. But this belief is
misguided and not borne out by history. In fact, as Chinas economic and military power rise, it has shown
an increased tolerance for risk and raised the likelihood of future war. China has repeatedly harassed Indonesian, Vietnamese and
Philippine ships in the latters territorial waters, claiming that Chinese citizens have been fishing there since ancient times, entitling them to vast maritime sovereignty. Its island construction on top of
shallow reefs is another component in Beijings strategy to assert dominance over the South China Sea. The near-collision of the Chinese fighter jet with the U.S. spy plane last week follows a string of
Gregory Poling, director
gutsy, high-risk encounters. Only last month, two Chinese jets flew within fifty feet of an American EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.

of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, commented,
Its clear that Chinas tolerance for risk has risen in the last several years and remains high, though luckily below the level at
which deadly force is likely. Despite high-level progress from Beijing and Washington on a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) in recent years, the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA)
may be testing the strategic limits of the outgoing Obama administrations patience. Poling added, What is most worrying to me is that it took less than six months for Beijing to violate the air-to-air
no matter how hard we might try, China is not
annex to CUES that Presidents Obama and Xi inked during the latters visit to DC. That suggests that

willing to have its behavior in disputed waters bound in any way, including by bilaterally agreed-upon
rules and norms. Do Chinese military forays in the East and South China Sea signal Beijings clear quest for regional domination and the inevitable ratcheting up of tensions with other
Pacific powers? Will increasingly risky provocations lead to military conflict as China stakes its claims? Or does Chinas dependence on global trade for continued economic growth at home preclude
The past has repeatedly proved wrong those who assume that a rising powers economic
war in the foreseeable future?

connectivity obviates the inevitability of great power military conflict. Peacenik theorists of the preWorld
War I era opined that the level of interconnectivity in global markets had rendered obsolete the great-power
warfare of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Likewise, in the interbellum period before the breakout of World War II,
advocates of appeasement wagered that a militarizing Germany would not threaten continental peace due to
its deep economic ties with the rest of Europe. Obviously, both schools of thought overestimated the ability of global
economic connectivity to deter military aggression. What makes scholars think China is different today? Of course, the scale of interpenetration of global
markets has risen and bound major powers such as China and the United States, as well as regional groupings like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ever more tightly together. But
just as proponents of peace were proven wrong in the twentieth century, echoes of the past are
perceivable in Asia and Europe today. Despite its dependence on the EU for revenue from gas exports,
Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Likewise, European dependence on Russian gas has not prevented the EU from leveling heavy sanctions
against Russia for its bellicosity. Nationalist impulses often trump economic considerations that would otherwise impel

autocrats toward moderation. Just as the Communist Party in Beijing is beholden to a public whose education hammered home the lessons of a century of humiliation at the
hands of Western imperialists, Russias Vladimir Putins legitimacyand mythosflows from a narrative of western domination that has prevented Russia from attaining the greater world power that
Beijing is investing in massive infrastructure projects across Southeast Asia and
Russians feel their nation deserves. Similarly, though

pursuant to the sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free-trade agreement,

Beijings behavior indicates that it will prioritize security interests over regional economic
integration, peace and stability. Material facts dictate that Chinas increasing economic wealth and
concordant military might will allow Beijing to exercise greater power in its backyard and on the world stage. These factors
afford the CCP a greater ability to risk reputational and economic costs to achieve its national security goals.
China has shown its capability to drive a wedge in ASEAN to suit its purposes. In 2012, with Cambodia chairing ASEAN, tensions in the South China Sea became so acute that the regional grouping
failed to deliver a joint statement for the first time in history since its 1967 founding. Facing a barrage of diplomatic pressure from Beijing, the ten member states were unable to agree on whether to
mention even the location of a Philippines-China standoff at the Scarborough Shoal, claimed by both sides and occupied by the Philippines until Chinese ships seized it in 2012. Beijing similarly
undermined ASEAN unity in April when it announced that it had come to an agreement with Cambodia, Brunei and Laosto the surprise of othersthat the South China Sea dispute should not
jeopardize relations between China and ASEAN. The United States supports ASEAN centrality as a strategic bulwark against Chinas attempts to impose unilateral faits accomplis. For its own reasons,
Beijing prefers to deal with ASEAN claimants one-on-one so as to reduce the capacity of the group to stand with a unified voice contra its security interests. Satu Limaye, director of the East-West
Center in Washington, has written, Instead of serving as a platform to manage bilateral and multilateral cooperation among member states, ASEAN may become an arena where bilateral and
multilateral cooperation are contested. As the two superpowers battle for influence within ASEAN, China has demonstrated its ability to use both charm and threats to advance its interests. Moreover,
asNick Bisley of La Trobe University writes, despite a U.S. China policy that blends containment with moral
suasion, it is far from clear that China can be contained or cowed into submission. Ultimately, the
regions two major powers have irreconcilable visions for Asias future. If that is the case, expect rocky times
ahead as differences of interest not only manifest in further naval and air confrontations, but also introduce
further friction into competing visions of the economic and security architecture of Asia. The result is a net
loss for all countries concerned.

b. Prior engagement failures

Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Second, some may say that the analysis and policy recommendations in this report are too pessimistic, based on a worst-case appraisal of Chinese
behavior. To the contrary, we draw our conclusions from Chinas current actions regarding its internal and external security, its neighbors,
and U.S. presence in Asia. We project nothing that is not already apparent in Chinas present policies and strategic intentions. Nevertheless, this hardly represents the worst case if China began to
behave like the Soviet Union, necessitating something far more costly than balancing. The word containment comes to mind, and we certainly do not recommend that vis--vis China in current
circumstances, not least because no Asian nation would join in such an endeavor. Other policymakers might argue that Chinas international behavior is normal for a rising power, that China is
gradually being socialized into the international system and it is far too early for Washington to give up on comprehensive cooperation and strategic reassurance toward Beijing. The issue here is how
long the United States should pursue a policy toward China that is clearly not sufficiently protecting U.S. vital national interests. Although Beijing has in general acted responsibly in the international
Campbell, former State Department assistant
lending institutions and may be slowly moving toward progress on difficult issues (such as climate change), Kurt

secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, recently stressed, We were always looking for deeper
cooperation with China and attempts to have on-the-ground cooperationfor example, on aid or humanitarian support operations, we
werent able to bring about; in military-to-military relations, on the diplomatic agenda, on aid, we found it
very difficult to get meaningful results.58 Meaningful results have been so difficult to achieve in the U.S.-
China relationship precisely because China seeks to replace the United States as the leading power in Asia. And
although Chinese behavior may be normal for a rising nation, that does not diminish Chinas overall
negative impact on the balance of power in the vast Indo-Pacific region; nor does it reduce the crucial requirement for Washington to develop policies that meet this
challenge of the rise of Chinese power and thwart Beijings objective to systematically undermine American strategic primacy in Asia.

c. Chinese nationalism escalates security competition

Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
Nations at times go beyond feeling superior to other nations and wind up loathing them as well. I call this
phenomenon hypernationalism, which is the belief that other nations are not just inferior but are dangerous,
and must be dealt with harshly, if not brutally. In such circumstances, contempt and hatred of the other suffuses the nation
and creates powerful incentives to use violence to eliminate the threat. Hypernationalism, in other words, can be a potent source of war.
One of the main causes of hypernationalism is intense security competition, which tends to cause people in the
relevant nation-states to demonize each other. Sometimes leaders use hypernationalism as part of a threat-inflation

strategy designed to make their publics aware of a danger they might otherwise not fully appreciate. In other cases,
hypernationalism bubbles up from below, mainly because the basic nastiness that accompanies security competition often causes the average citizen in one nation-state to despise almost everything
A major crisis can readily add fuel to the fire. Contemporary China is ripe for
about the rival nation-state.

hypernationalism. In the years between Maos decisive victory over the Kuomintang in 1949 and his death in 1976, communism and nationalism were powerful forces that worked hand in
hand to shape almost every aspect of daily life in China. However, after Maos passing, and certainly after the military crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, communism lost

much of its legitimacy with the Chinese public. In response, Chinas leaders have come to rely much more
heavily on nationalism to maintain public support for the regime. It would be a mistake, however, to think that nationalism is merely propaganda purveyed by
the leadership for the purpose of sustaining the publics allegiance to the state. In fact, many Chinese citizens passionately embrace nationalist ideas of their own volition. The 1990s, as Peter Gries
notes, witnessed the emergence of a genuinely popular nationalism in China that should not be conflated with state or official nationalism. What makes nationalism in contemporary China such a
potent force is that it is both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. Not only has nationalism become a stronger force in China in recent years, its content has also changed in important ways.
During Maos rule, it emphasized the strengths of the Chinese people in the face of great adversity. They were portrayed as heroic fighters who had stood up to and ultimately defeated imperial Japan.
Gries explains, This heroic or victor national narrative first served the requirements of Communist revolutionaries seeking to mobilize popular support in the 1930s and 1940s, and later served the
nation-building goals of the Peoples Republic in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. . . . New China needed heroes. That proud narrative, however, has largely been abandoned over the past twenty-five
years, replaced by one that represents China as a victim of aggression by the worlds other great powers. In particular, great emphasis is placed on what the Chinese refer to as their century of national
humiliation, which runs from the First Opium War (183942) until the end of World War II in 1945. China is depicted during that period as a weak but noble country that was preyed upon by
rapacious great powers and suffered deeply as a consequence. Among the foreign devils are Japan and the United States, which are said to have taken advantage of China at almost every turn. The
theme of China as a helpless victim is not the only strand of Chinese nationalist thought. There are a number of positive stories as well. For example, Chinese of all persuasions take great pride in
emphasizing the superiority of Confucian culture. Nevertheless, pride of place in Chinese present-day nationalist thought belongs to narratives that emphasize the century of nationalist humiliation,
which, as Gries notes, frame the ways that Chinese interact with the West today. Indeed, for Chinas military, avenging humiliation remains a key goal. We have already seen evidence of how
Chinas lingering anger and resentment toward Japan and the United States can exacerbate a crisis and seriously damage relations between them. The accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in
Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo war was seen by most Chinese as just another example of a powerful country taking advantage of and humiliating China. It generated large protests and outrage against
the United States in China. The Chinese reacted similarly in 2001, when an American spy plane collided with and downed a Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea. And skirmishing between
The intensified
China and Japan over ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 201213 ignited a firestorm of anti-Japanese protests across China, some of which were violent.

security competition that lies ahead will only increase Chinas hostility toward Japan and the United States, and it is
likely to turn into an acute case of hypernationalism. Of course, this development will, in turn, further intensify the security
competition and heighten the possibility of war. In essence, ideology will matter in Asia in the future just as it mattered during the Cold War. But the content will
be different, as hypernationalism in China, and possibly other Asian countries as well, will replace the dispute between communism and liberal capitalism. That said, the main driving force behind Sino-
American relations in the decades ahead will be realist logic, not ideology.
This debate is an epistemic filter for reading the 1ac the question of whether China
is hostile determines whether they solve
Kunti, 15 visiting fellow at European Union Centre in Taiwan, National Taiwan University; PhD
candidate at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb (Dario, The Ominous Triangle: China-
Taiwan-the United States relationship CIRR XXI (72) 2015, 239-280)
Realists use a concept of power shift to explain the rise of China and the challenge this rise poses to the global domination of the United States. As rapid economic growth and technological
modernization enabled China to expand its political and military power, some observers argue that this trend, if it continues, could undermine the U.S.-dominated unipolar international system and even
That China might
dethrone the United States from a position of a sole global superpower. According to the realist paradigm, a gain for China would result in a loss for the United States.

already be on the way to overtake the US raises a prospect of a power transition within the international
system. Thus, whether China is a status quo power or one that seeks to revise the international system has
become a critical issue in Sino-American relations. As Chinas rise includes not only economic and political power, but also the policy that enhances its
military capabilities, the United States feels less secure and consequently threatened. Whether Chinas rise will be peaceful or violent is a question that preoccupies scholars and statesmen alike
Under these
Scholars who examine the consequences of Chinas rise through the lenses of either power transition theory or offensive realism predict a future of conflict (Fravel 2010: 505).

assumptions, the push to change the existing distribution of power in Chinas favor will raise the stakes
between the two powers so high that this could send China and the United States on a collision course.
AT UQ
 uq- shift to balancing

The US is shifting from engagement to balancing policymakers recognize

engagements failure
Eisenman 16 - Assistant professor at UT at Austin Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs,
Senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council (Joshua, Rethinking U.S. Strategy
Towards China, Carnegie Council, 1/21,
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/756//AK)
Questioning Engagement Now, however, a growing contingent in Washington and beyond is arguing that extensive U.S. engagement has
failed to prevent China from threatening other countries. One longtime proponent of engagement with China, David M. Lampton, gave a speech in May
2015 entitled "A Tipping Point in U.S.-China Relations is Upon Us," in which he noted that, despite the remarkable "policy continuity" of "constructive

engagement" through eight U.S. and five Chinese administrations, "today important components of the American policy elite
increasingly are coming to see China as a threat."11 Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd summarized this view: Beijing's long-term policy is aimed at pushing the
U.S. out of Asia altogether and establishing a Chinese sphere of influence spanning the region.12 Similarly, in June, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on PBS Newshour: "The longstanding
there have been calls for
consensus that China's rise is good for the U.S. is beginning to break down. In response to these misgivings about Beijing's intentions,

Washington to actively shape China's strategic choices by enhancing U.S. military capabilities and
strengthening alliances to counterbalance against its growing strength. Recent publications reflect increasing apprehension; most argue that
policymakers must avoid an enduring "structural problem" in international relations that causes rising powers to become aggressive.

The next President will shift China strategy towards enhanced balancing
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
How prominently cooperation will feature in this blend, however, is open to debate. There are grounds for thinking that this relationship will be increasingly
weighted more toward competition, in which case enhanced balancing may step to the fore as a strategic
option. Should the power gap between Washington and Beijing narrow, future administrations may seek
cover in strengthened defense cooperation with China's wary neighbors. Alternatively, a sharp uptick in capacity could
tempt U.S. leaders to press their advantage by discouraging the PRC from entertaining hopes of catching
up. It says much about America's distrust of China and its determination to preserve its regional leadership that policy toward China has hardened during the Obama administration, which has often
been ambivalent about exerting U.S. influence abroad and has governed during a period of prolonged economic lethargy and multiple crises outside of Asia. Obama's successor will almost certainly
; a combative narrative has taken hold among Republicans and liberal internationalist factions in
display fewer inhibitions

the Democratic Party that this president's caution has eroded U.S. credibility and invited aggression from the
PRC and other actors. It is not difficult to imagine the next administration, having campaigned on the theme that a
more muscular foreign policy is needed to restore U.S. leadership, being even less coy in responding to an
assertive China and building on the enhanced balancing ideas represented by Obama's pivot to Asia. Indeed, over the
long term, a less restrained stance toward China would not be inconsistent for a nation with an exalted sense of its place in the world and that is prone to flexing its muscles. For at least the next two or
three decades, an increasingly tense Sino-American relationship marked by perpetual jostling for leverage is the most likely prospect.

The US is abandoning engagement in favor of containment

Mearsheimer, 16- Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Co-director,
Program on International Security Policy University of Chicago (John, Interview with Peter Navarro,
Huffington Post, 3/10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-navarro-and-greg-autry/mearsheimer-on-
strangling_b_9417476.html
Now, in the 1990s, the Clinton administration did pursue engagement. There was little evidence of containment: and you
could do that in the 1990s because China was then weak enough that it didnt matter. So I believe in the 1990s that the Clinton administration really did believe
in engagement and thought that containment was a bad idea and pursued this policy of engagement. But were now reaching the point where China is

growing economically to the point where its going to have a lot of military capability, and people are getting increasingly nervous.
So what you see is were beginning to transition from engagement to containment; and this, of course, is what the
pivot to Asia is all about. Hilary Clinton, who is married to Bill Clinton and pursued engagement in the 1990s, is now the principle proponent of the pivot to Asia; and
she fully understands that it is all about containment. Of course, whats going to happen here given that we live in the United States is that were

going to use liberal rhetoric to disguise our realist behavior. So we will go to great lengths not to talk in
terms of containment even though were engaged in containment and even though the Chinese know full well that were trying to contain them.
But for our own sake and for our public we will talk in much more liberal terms. So its liberal ideology disguising realist behavior.

The engagement coalition is collapsing Sino-US relations are dominated by

competition, not cooperation
Shambaugh 15 professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University
(David, In a Fundamental Shift, China and the US are Now Engaged in an All-Out Competition, South
China Morning Post, June 11th, 2015, http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-
opinion/article/1819980/fundamental-shift-china-and-us-are-now-engaged-all-out) // EDP
While Washington and Beijing cooperate where they can, there has also been steadily rising competition in the relationship. This
balance has now shifted, with competition being the dominant factor. There are several reasons for it - but one is that security now
trumps economics in the relationship. The competition is not only strategic competition, it is actually comprehensive competition: commercial, ideological, political, diplomatic,
technological, even in the academic world where China has banned a number of American scholars and is beginning to bring pressure to bear on university joint ventures in China. Mutual

distrust is pervasive in both governments, and is also evident at the popular level. The last Pew global attitudes data on this, in 2013, found distrust rising in both
countries. Roughly two-thirds of both publics view US-China relations as "competitive" and "untrustworthy" - a significant change since 2010 when a majority of people in both nations still had
Viewed from Washington, it is increasingly difficult to
positive views of the other. One senses that the sands are fundamentally shifting in the relationship.

find a positive narrative and trajectory into the future. The "engagement coalition" is crumbling and a
"competition coalition" is rising. In my view, the relationship has been fundamentally troubled for many years and has failed to find
extensive common ground to forge a real and enduring partnership. The "glue" that seems to keep it together is the fear of it falling apart. But
that is far from a solid basis for an enduring partnership between the world's two leading powers. The macro trajectory for the last decade has been

steadily downward - punctuated only by high-level summits between the two presidents, which temporarily
arrest the downward trajectory. This has been the case with the last four presidential summits. Occasionally, bilateral meetings like the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, which will convene in Washington in two weeks' time, provide similar stabilisation and impetus for movement in specific policy sectors. But their effects are short-lived,

with only a matter of months passing before the two countries encounter new shocks and the deterioration of
ties resumes. The most recent jolts to the relationship, just a few months since Xi Jinping and Barack Obama took their stroll in the Zhongnanhai (the so-called Yingtai Summit), have been
the escalating rhetoric and tensions around China's island-building in the South China Sea. Behind this imbroglio lies rising concerns about Chinese military capabilities, US military operations near

China, and the broader balance of power in Asia. But there have been a number of other lesser, but not unimportant, issues that have recently

buffeted the relationship in different realms - in law enforcement (arrests of Chinese for technology theft and falsification of applications to US universities), legal
(China's draft NGO and national security laws), human rights (convictions of rights lawyers and the general repression in China since 2009), cyber-hacking (of the US Office of

Personnel Management most recently) and problems in trade and investment. Hardly a day passes when one does not open the

newspaper to read of more - and serious - friction. This is the "new normal" and both sides had better
get used to it - rather than naively professing a harmonious relationship that is not achievable. This has given impetus to
an unprecedented outpouring of commentary and reports by Washington think tanks in recent months. I have lived and worked there a long time, and cannot recall such a tsunami of publications on
US-China relations - and they are all, with one exception (Kevin Rudd's Asia Society report), negative in nature, calling for a re-evaluation of US policy towards China, as well as a hardening of policy
towards China across the board. A qualitative shift in American thinking about China is occurring. In essence, the "engagement" strategy pursued since Nixon across eight
administrations, that was premised on three pillars,is unravelling . The American expectation has been, first, as China modernised economically, it would liberalise politically; second, as
China's role in the world grew, it would become a "responsible stakeholder" - in Robert Zoellick's words - in upholding the global liberal order; and third, that China would not challenge the American-
dominant security architecture and order in East Asia.
 U: US wins now

China lacks the capability to push the US out only US concessions can alter the
balance of power
Roy, 13 Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu who specialises in Asia-Pacific international
security issues (Denny, The Problem with Premature Appeasement Survival, 55:3, 183-202, DOI:
10.1080/00396338.2013.802861
Whites policy recommendation asks Washington to accept defeat prematurely. China has not yet caught up
economically. Its gross domestic product is about half that of the United States. No serious military analyst
suggests the PLA is a match for US military forces in the Pacific. If war broke out today, the most the Chinese could
realistically aspire to would be to destroy a major US warship, while it would not be an unrealistic goal of US
forces to sink the entire PLA Navy. Beijings increasing confidence in challenging the US role in the Asia-
Pacific region is largely based on the expectation, which White shares, that present trends will continue and Chinas
strength, relative to that of the United States, will increase. This expectation is certainly defensible, as Chinas faster rate of economic growth suggests it will
overtake the United States in economic output in approximately a decade.21 With the worlds largest economy, China would have the wherewithal to build strong military forces and wield unparalleled
influence with its many trading partners, laying the foundation for its challenge to US supremacy in the Asia-Pacific. But this premise is highly controversial, and the obstacles that
could prevent China from achieving such regional dominance are significant. Former US ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, one of the United
States foremost China experts, is among those who conclude that it is foolish to postulate that the twenty-first century will belong to China.22 Over the next decade, China will face

many internal obstacles to its rapid economic growth. The factors that have driven its expansion in the post Mao era chiefly an abundant supply of
cheap labour and capital, alongside worldwide demand for Chinese exports are diminishing. Many economists believe that
Chinese economic growth will decrease to a rate closer to those of todays developed economies within a decade or two.23 The effect of Beijings one-child policy will begin to impair the countrys
productive capacity. Chinas fertility rate has dropped to 1.4 births per woman: below the developed country rate of 1.7 and far below the population replacement level of 2.1. The majority of Chinese
factory workers are between the ages of 20 and 24, and the number of people in this age bracket will decrease by 42% in 201030. This reduction in factory workforce will be compounded by an
increasing number of young adults pursuing university studies. It is estimated that the number of people in this age bracket available for factory work will therefore soon shrink by around 50%.
Additionally, national savings will decline as the population ages, and the number of Chinese over the age of 60 will double in 201030. During this period, the number of workers supporting each
retiree will drop from five to two.24 To maintain the economys growth, Chinese leaders must rebalance and restructure it to rely on innovation and domestic consumption rather than infrastructure
investment and exports. Beijing is aware of the need for changes. Outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao famously said Chinas growth is unbalanced, unsustainable and uncoordinated.25 The Chinese
Communist Party, however, is conservative and wary of social turmoil. The required changes would be opposed by powerful special interest groups and would roil much of Chinese society. The greater
transparency and rule of law needed to boost entrepreneurship and innovation are implicit political challenges to Beijings leadership. It is unclear whether Chinas rulers will be bold enough to fully
implement the necessary reforms. China is a major economic and military power. It is not, however, strong enough to dominate
the region. War with the United States would be so devastating that the Chinese leadership could not contemplate
it unless a vital Chinese interest was under attack. Chinas continued ascension to a position of strength from which it could expect to prevail at acceptable cost in a regional conflict against US forces
or against two or more of its neighbours is uncertain. It would be unwise for the United States to make large concessions to China to

prevent a scenario that may not occur.

US defense cooperation is still capable of deterring China

Ross, 13- Robert S. Ross is a professor of political science at Boston College, associate of the Fairbank
Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, senior advisor of the security studies program at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Specializing on Chinese foreign and defense policy and U.S.-China relations. (Robert, US grand strategy,
the rise of china, and US national security strategy for East Asia, Strategic Studies Quarterly,
8/13/2013, 7(2), 20-40, ProQuest//DK
The United States has also strengthened its forward presence in East Asia through cooperation with its
regional security partners. Despite domestic political complications in Japan over Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa, cooperation has continued
to expand between the US and Japanese militaries, including exercises focused on defending Japanese-
controlled islands claimed by China. The 1999 completion of the deep-draft-vessel pier at Singapores Changi
port facility provided the US Navy with a modern and comprehensive aircraft carrier facility in the South
China Sea. In 2005, Singapore and the United States signed the Strategic Framework Agreement, consolidating
defense and security ties and enabling greater cooperation in joint naval exercises.21 During the George H. W. Bush administration,
the United States developed greater defense cooperation with the Philippines. It expanded access for US naval ships to Philippine
waters, and between 2001 and 2005, annual US military assistance to the Philippines increased from $1.9 millionto approximately $126 million, making it the largest recipient of US military assistance in
East Asia.22 The US Navy also expanded its access to Malaysias Port Klang in the Strait of Malacca.23 More recently, during the Obama administration, the United States further expanded US-
Philippine cooperation with increased arms sales, including coastal patrol ships and the expansion of US-Philippine naval exercises, while reaching agreement for US Navy access to its former base at
Subic Bay.24 The administration has also developed improved defense cooperation with Indonesia and New Zealand and reached agreement with Australia for stationing US Marines on its military
Ongoing modernization of US defense capability has been especially important for balancing
training base in Darwin.

the rise of China. The development of ISR based weapon systems, including remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)
and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), is an effective response to Chinas development of antiship
missile capability. These systems will reduce the vulnerability of US regional power-projection operations
while contributing to its antisubmarine warfare capability vis--vis Chinas growing and advanced submarine
fleet.25 The deployment of advanced armaments in underwater platforms, including Tomahawk cruise
missiles on Ohio-class submarines, is a similarly effective response to Chinese military modernization. US
defense modernization has sustained the ability to deter Chinese use of force to challenge the
regional order. Although the PLA dominates Chinas land borders, its navy remains grossly inferior to the US Navy.26 It continues to depend on small
coastal administration and coast guard ships for its maritime activities in disputed waters in the South China
Sea, and its antipiracy activities in the Gulf of Aden consist of unsophisticated operations conducted by very
few ships. Chinas surface ship capability remains weak; its new aircraft carrier is undersized, lacks aircraft,
and is highly vulnerable to US forces. It is primarily a prestige ship rather than a warfighting ship.27 China has
just begun construction of its next-generation guided-missile destroyer. Both the quantity and quality of
these ships will be vastly inferior to US Aegis-equipped destroyers. The DoD reported that in 2011 less than
30 percent of PLA surface forces, air forces, and air defense forces were modern and that only 55 percent
of its submarine fleet was modern.28 The recent eagerness of US regional strategic partners to
consolidate defense cooperation with the United States reflects its continued dominance vis--vis
China and confidence that it can provide for their security despite Chinese opposition.
 U: Economic slowdown
Economic slowdown is containing Chinas rise
Blumenthal 16 (Dan, directior of Asian studies at the American enterprise institute and former senior
director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense, The Three Ways We Get China
and Its Neighbors Wrong, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/three-ways-get-china-
neighbors-wrong/, May 16, 2016, NRG)
China, it is now agreed, has entered a period of prolonged economic slowdown. Its own reported 2015 numbers showed that the economy grew only 6.9 percent, down
from the breakneck double-digit rates of the first decade of the 21st century. But the true number is surely far lower. Economist Derek Scissors argues: " If Xi [Jinping] does not quickly move beyond

talk to profound pro-market reform, China will not slow or struggle-it will just stop." China's economic slowdown has had many causes,
including an abysmal demographic situation, high levels of debt, and an inefficient and corrupt financial system. Global demand is shrinking, which means China's export-

driven growth model is approaching its end. And the regime's response to the 2008 global financial crisis-namely, government stimulus and the accumulation of massive debt-will continue
to cause more problems down the road. A strategic reassessment is in order, and the first question to be asked is what China's slowdown means for the regime's internal stability and external behavior. Tough choices clearly lie ahead for

Xi Jinping. Internally, he must find new ways to build legitimacy for a Chinese Communist Party that faced little
President

organized resistance as long as most Chinese living standards were improving. Theoretically, of course, China could reverse direction and
implement substantive market reforms. But politically those reforms do not seem to be in the offing-it is simply too risky to let capital leave Chinese banks and flow freely, as was envisioned by the 2013 Communist Party Plenum. So far, the
approach of Xi Jinping has instead been a high-profile "anti-corruption" campaign that has helped to further centralize power and featured a crackdown on the media, lawyers, intellectuals, and churches.
AT Yan Bad/ Johnson Good
 --AT: Yan data unreliable

Yans data is sound and statistically significant

Yan and Qi, 12 - Yan Xuetong is Professor of International Relations and Director of Institute of Modern
International Relations, Tsinghua University. Qi Haixia is Lecturer at Department of International Relations,
Tsinghua University (Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: ChinaUS Intensifying Rivalry Does not
Amount to Cold War The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5, 2012, 105127
doi:10.1093/cjip/pos007

As Johnston does not share our understanding of superficial friendship, he questions whether or not the
average score we obtain from the trend line of SinoUS relations from 1989 to present supports our theory
of superficial friendship. Johnston argues: [T]he fitted trend lines show that the average annual score
increases over time and the annual average absolute deviation declines. The monthly disaggregated data
shows similar trends. In other words, SinoUS relations improve and the volatility declines.32 Johnston
bases his conclusions on a rising trend in the average score and therefore refutes the nature of changing Sino
US relations as defined by the theory of superficial friendship. Johnston understands superficial friendship as
bilateral relations that are continuously deteriorating rather than as highly volatile. Relations between sincere
friends and enemies are stable, but in different ways. Regardless of whether or not bilateral relations are
improving or deteriorating, as long as bilateral relations do not approximate those of either a sincere friend or
enemy, the states can be characterized as either superficial friends or superficial enemies. As such, the average
score can only show us the changing trends in SinoUS relations during a particular period, and does not give
us a basis for assessing whether or not bilateral relations are characterized by sincere or superficial friendship
or sincere or superficial enmity. To observe instability of superficial relations between China and the United
States since the end of the Cold War we must make comparisons with other historical periods. We cannot
otherwise discern whether the overall trend in Post-Cold War relations is towards improvement or
deterioration. From a statistical perspective, we cannot use differences within a particular set of statistics to
assess differences between different sets. That is to say that superficial friends, real friends, superficial
enemies, and real enemies can all demonstrate trends towards improvement or deterioration, but trends in the
extent of change of characteristics of a relationship cannot tell us what type of relationship it is. In order to
assess the character of the relationship we can only compare average scores across the four periods 1950
1970 (real enemies), 19711977 (superficial enemies), 19781988 (real friends), and 19892011 (superficial
friends). See Figures 36. In Figure 36, time is on the horizontal axis and the average value for SinoUS
relations is on the vertical axis. As the unit in the database for the value of SinoUS relations is expressed in
months, the average value expressed in Figure 1 is the sum of the 12 monthly values divided by 12. For ease
of comparison, the equation used to derive the curve for each period is listed below.33 In the following
equations, y is the average value for SinoUS relations, while x represents the year. The first year in the period
is assigned the number 1, and the second year the number 2. Formula for the curve representing 19501970:
y 0.029x 6.593 Formula for the curve representing 19711977: y 0.593x 6.362 Formula for the curve
representing 19781988: y 0.322x 0.084 Formula for the curve representing 19892011: y 0.087x 0.578
From Figure 3 we can see that from 1950 to 1970, the average value for SinoUS relations mainly fluctuated
between 8 and 5, with the fitted values trending slightly downward. This is the sole period out of the four
exhibiting a downward trend in fitted values. Thus, during the period in which China and the United States
were real enemies, the average value for their relationship declined. According to Figure 4, during the
superficial enemy period from 1971 to 1977, the score for SinoUS relations hovered between 7 and 2, with
the fitted values during the period trending towards a rise. In Figure 5, which depicts the period of real
friendship from 1978 to 1988, the value for SinoUS relations fluctuated between 2 and 3, with a trend of
increasing fitted values. Figure 6 represents the period of superficial friendship from 1989 to 2011, during
which the value for Sino US relations fluctuated between 1 and 3, with a trend towards a slight increase in
the fitted values. Starting from 1971, the average value curve shows a rising trend, but with variation in pace
of the rise. We observe that during the period of superficial enemies (19711977) the coefficient on the
independent variable for each year is 0.593higher than that for any other period. The coefficient on the
independent variable for each year during the period of real friendship (19781988), is 0.322second highest
of the four periods. During the superficial friendship period (19892011), the coefficient on the independent
variable is only 0.087, implying negligible, statistically speaking insignificant improvements in SinoUS
relations, slightly higher only than the real enemy period, on which the coefficient is 0.029, a similarly
insignificant difference. Based on the above analysis, the value during the real enemy period (19501970) for
SinoUS relations was the lowest. No trend towards improvement could be observed during this period.
During the superficial enemy period (19711977), although the value for SinoUS relations was low, the
change trended continuously towards improvement, and the pace of improvement was most rapid. During
the period of real friends (19781988) and superficial friends (19892011), the extent of change in SinoUS
relations was mainly between (2, 3), trending towards a gradual rise. The pace of improvement during the real
friendship period, however, was second only to that of the superficial enemy period, and much higher than
that for the superficial friend period. All of this points to obvious statistical support of the assessment that
current SinoUS relations exhibit characteristics of superficial friendship.

Johnstons regression analysis of Yans data is flawed

Yan and Qi, 12 - Yan Xuetong is Professor of International Relations and Director of Institute of Modern
International Relations, Tsinghua University. Qi Haixia is Lecturer at Department of International Relations,
Tsinghua University (Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: ChinaUS Intensifying Rivalry Does not
Amount to Cold War The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5, 2012, 105127
doi:10.1093/cjip/pos007

Johnston also used regression analysis of the absolute deviation to demonstrate that SinoUS relations from
1998 to 2011 have trended towards improvement.34 The regression coefficient on the equation for the
standard deviation curve from 1989 to 2011, however, is 0.013not significantly different from zero, and
thus cannot be used to demonstrate the trend of decreasing instability. Rather, it is an indication of the lack of
change in deviation across time. The instability in SinoUS relations thus remained constant. (See Figure 7)
 AT: Johnston top level

Ignore Johnstons response it predates Xi, and Xis foreign policy confirms Yans
argument
Topping, 15 - A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL
FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF MILITARY AND
STRATEGIC STUDIES GRADUATE PROGRAM IN MILITARY AND STRATEGIC STUDIES
CALGARY, ALBERTA (Vincent, Tracing a Line in the Water: Chinas Anti-Access/Area-Denial Strategy in
the Asia Pacific Region and its Implications for the United States
http://theses.ucalgary.ca/jspui/bitstream/11023/2602/4/ucalgary_2015_topping_vincent.pdf
For decades, China has kept the same discourse: it is seeking peaceful development, it will never seek
hegemony, and security alliances in Asia are a relic of the Cold War that should be discarded. Nonetheless, in
recent years (and especially since the arrival of Xi Jinping as the President of the PRC), there has been an
increasingly severe dichotomy between words and actions. Whereas the official Chinese discourse had long
been that China was still a developing country that should not be pushed too hard otherwise it could destroy
its social cohesion and enhance the pressure on its domestic tensions,39 and whereas China had for decades
kept Deng Xiaopings motto of keeping a low profile and never seek leadership, now China wants to be
recognized as a leading power in the world and is striving for achievements. Chinese international relations
expert and Dean of the International Relations department at Tsinghua University Yan Xuetong had been
preaching since at least 2010 that China and the United States should drop the pretense that they are partners
in this new century and accept that they are competitors that will more often than not have divergent and
conflicting interests.40 After all, according to Yan, Chinas endeavour to regain its historical place as a world
leading power and the United States refusal to relinquish its sole superpower status constitutes their greatest
political conflict. 41 In the words of Alastair Iain Johnston, this is quite an admission about Chinas
interests as it goes against every single policy statement and declaratory policy that China has issued over
thirty years.42 This could be disregarded as a Chinese realists perspective who is trying to further his point of
view and agenda. However, when Xi Jinping came to power, he projected his vision of China for the future,
which entailed that the country needed to undergo a national rejuvenation (fuxing zhi lu, ).
According to Yan, this is a phrase that literally refers to resuming Chinas historical international status as
the worlds most advanced state in early Tang Dynasty (618-917 AD). Today this phrase specifically refers to
Chinas efforts to catch up with the United States in terms of comprehensive national power [] the
competition for international leadership between China and the United States will be inevitable (emphasis
added).43 This also points out to one inconvenient truth about Chinese politics, one that will definitely leave
a bitter taste for American policymakers that have been working tirelessly to socialize China in the
international system and who thought liberalism would convert China to the benefits of the current
international order: not only realist (along with ultra-nationalist) thinkers in China are not on the fringe of
Chinese politics, they are very much in the mainstream. 44 International relations theory is still somewhat
of a new phenomenon in China, but Chinese experts have quickly appropriated realism (and especially John J.
Mearsheimers version of offensive realism) as one of their own.45 It is now, and has been for a while, the
most dominant paradigm of international relations in China.46 Some theorists in China like Wang Jisi, Dean
of the International Relations department at the prestigious Peking University, have been trying for years to
strike a conciliatory note to reconcile differences and bridge the gap between China and the U.S., but his
attempt (and those of likeminded colleagues) to do so is mostly the exception, not the rule.47
Yans argument is empirically correct - rising expectations from new engagement in
2010 spurred a hostile overreaction that hurt relations
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 199-200)
The problems with the Obama administration's overeager reassurance campaign would become evident in
early 2010 when China reacted harshly to the normal U.S. policies that particularly offended Beijing.
According to my Chinese interlocutors, many in China had come to the conclusion that the Obama
administration was different from its predecessors in its basic approach to China. Either because the
administration realized that the United States was weaker than before the financial crisis or because the
Obama team had a different philosophical approach to the bilateral relations, it appeared to many Chinese as
more accommodating and sensitive to Chinese concerns than its predecessors. My better-connected contacts
said that this view was not shared among officials at the top of the foreign policy establishment, but it was
commonly held by both the general public and many in the Party who were not as experienced in foreign
affairs. So in early 2010 when the Obama administration behaved like its predecessorsselling arms to
Taiwan, criticizing Beijing for infringing on freedom of the press, and arranging for the president to meet
with the Dalai Lamathere was real disappointment and a harsher than normal reaction in Beijing.
Threats of retaliation were leveled against U.S. firms that were selling arms to Taiwan. Prominent
commentators, including military officers, suggested in state-run media that China should dump U.S.
Treasury bills to punish the United States in its time of economic turmoil. At a minimum, they said, China
should reduce cooperation in policy arenas important to the United States, like North Korea and Iran. In
their view, the Obama administration clearly violated China's "core interests." It is only logical, according to
many Chinese observers, that Beijing should in turn refuse to assist the United States in pursuing what Beijing
believes to be U.S. core national interests, such as preventing nuclear proliferation or helping stabilize the
U.S. economy. The top leadership in China wisely eschewed policies that would harm both the United States
and China, such as manipulating the purchase or sale of Treasury bills. But the pressure on the leadership
from nationalist voices inside and outside the Party was intense. This domestic insecurity helps explain
China's ideological and acerbic reactions to several challenges on China's periphery in 2010 that were not of
Beijing's making. The result was arguably the worst year for Chinese diplomacy in the reform era. Beijing
responded clumsily to North Korean belligerence toward Seoul, sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea,
and Japan's arrest of a Chinese fisherman near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. In the process, Beijing
undercut the achievements of the previous twelve years of constructive reassurance toward its neighbors,
from Japan to Vietnam to India. By the end of the year, Beijing had upset its bilateral relations with almost all
of its neighbors. The only countries Beijing hadn't offended were Russia and a couple of Southeast Asian
nations.

Johnstons argument is based narrowly on consumer psychology studies, not IR

Yan and Qi, 12 - Yan Xuetong is Professor of International Relations and Director of Institute of Modern
International Relations, Tsinghua University. Qi Haixia is Lecturer at Department of International Relations,
Tsinghua University (Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: ChinaUS Intensifying Rivalry Does not
Amount to Cold War The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5, 2012, 105127
doi:10.1093/cjip/pos007
Certain US scholars understand the theory of superficial friendship solely from the vantage point of its
characteristics; they have not considered the explanatory power of the theory from the dualistic perspective of
both character and strategy. As they perceive the character of superficial friendship solely as one that causes
deterioration in SinoUS relations, and do not acknowledge that the superficial friendship strategy can
enhance SinoUS ties, these scholars argue that the classic security dilemma theory explains the deterioration
of the relationship, so precluding the need to explicate a superficial friendship theory. Below, we focus on
points that Alastair Iain Johnston raises in his recently published critique of my theory of superficial
friendship. Johnston says: Yans basic hypothesis appears to be that superficial friendship generates excessive
disappointment due to excessive optimism. This, in turn, accounts for the ups and downs in the USChina
relationship, particularly since the end of the Cold War.22 Obviously, Johnston does not realize that the ups
of SinoUS relations result from the strategy of superficial friendship adopted by these two countries, and
that the downs are caused by the nature of superficial friendship between them. Although very cautious,
Johnstons psychological critique still leaves room for discussion. Based on David E. Bells research, he
argues that [A]fter series of disappointments actors will revise their expectations in more pessimistic
directions. Thus, one should see more conflictual (though perhaps more stable) relations with interlocutors
over time.23 David E. Bells article researches the psychology of consumers when selecting products.24
Whereas research on consumer psychology is about relations among economic interests, SinoUS relations
cover the three areas of economics, politics and security. From 1990 to 2011, SinoUS economic relations
were obviously much better than SinoUS political or security relations. Deterioration in SinoUS ties over
that time were mainly the result of political or security issues, and economic interests helped to enhance
relations between the two countries during this period. Moreover, the key assumption in research on
consumer psychologythat actors seek to maximize benefitsdiffers from what happens in SinoUS
relations, where interlocutors look at both absolute and relative benefits. For example, although the United
States desperately needs to increase employment, the US government nevertheless continues to restrict
Chinese investment in the United States to prevent China from controlling United States strategic economic
sectors. This is a classic example of a policy targeting relative benefits. Hu Jintao requested at the 2011 APEC
summit in Hawaii that Obama ease political restrictions on Chinese investment, but there was no progress on
the matter.25 Using consumer psychology to analyze the diplomatic policy of states is thus problematic.
Johnston admits: Of course, exuberance, disappointment, and shattered expectations are characteristics of
the psychology of people and small groups, not nations or states.26
Answers to link turns
 AT: Engagement key to Chinese moderates

Zero empirical evidence supports the boost moderates claim

Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 261-262)
If the efforts of outsiders to promote political change in China have thus far accomplished little, it is hard to see how doing less in this regard will achieve more. Some of the
"enhanced engagers" do not appear to care very much about this. Their goal, stated with varying degrees of candor, is to build the best possible ties with China
regardless of how it is ruled. Others continue to harbor hopes of change but believe that the United States can do more to hinder it, by taking steps that hard-
liners can cast as hostile or disrespectful to the Chinese people, than to speed it along. Conversely, more engagement, more deference, more reassurance, and less
criticism should help to undercut the arguments of conservative hyper-nationalists and bolster those of the more liberal,
cosmopolitan, and reform-minded members of the Chinese elite. This is a pleasing theory, but one that has virtually
no empirical evidence to back it up. The idea that China's leadership contains hawks and doves, liberals and
conservatives, "good guys" and "bad guys" seems plausible to Americans familiar with their own patterns of domestic politics .
Indeed, there may be people among the think tankers and university professors who now opine publicly on questions of foreign and domestic policy to whom these labels
could reasonably be applied. Within
the Chinese governing elite, however, there appears to be far more unanimity
than difference. Here, as senior CIA analyst Paul Heer points out, "the hard-liners versus moderates dichotomy is a false
one." Certainly since the purges that followed the 1989 Tiananmen "incident," the range of acceptable debate
on domestic questions has become much narrower. On these issues, writes Heer, China's leaders are "all moderates, and they are all hard-
liners." On economic policy, there has been no serious challenge to Deng Xiaoping's market-oriented reforms. Regarding politics, however, "Chinese rulers are all hard-
liners, since they retain a commitment to socialism, albeit with Chinese characteristics, and to Communist Party rule."36 Supposing that factions of some kind do exist, it is
by no means obvious how their influence would be affected by external events. The notion that a low-key, nonconfrontational American approach will favor China's
If Washington adopts a softer, more acquiescent stance,
"moderates" has an intuitive appeal. But the opposite is at least equally plausible.
Chinese "hard-liners" will no doubt try to take the credit, arguing that the change was a direct result of
tough policies, like the sustained military buildup, that they championed. Attempts at accommodation could
wind up strengthening precisely the groups and individuals it was intended to weaken.

Engagement cant spur moderates

Eisenman 16 - Assistant professor at UT at Austin Lyndon Baines Johnson School of
Public Affairs, Senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council
(Joshua, Rethinking U.S. Strategy Towards China, Carnegie Council, 1/21,
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/756//AK)
To improve U.S. policy towards China to avoid, and yet be prepared for, conflict requires going beyond simplistic applications of
international relations theory. It means opening the 'black box' of China's policymaking process to understand why it makes
the decisions it does and how this process has and is changing. Unfortunately, barriers continue to prevent the U.S. from better
understanding and responding to China. Most importantly, Friedberg identified a "yawning ideological chasm" that inhibits
the success of U.S.' engagement, arguing that: "The very different domestic political regimes of the two pacific powers" make the liberalization of the
Chinese political system essential for "a true trans-Pacific entente." CPC repression inhibits change in China and presents "a
significant additional impetus to rivalry.20 American policymakers' beliefs about China are rooted in their own preconceived views and experiences in
China. Since Americans began visiting the PRC in the early 1970s, rosy assessments have become commonplace. As the Sinologist Robert Scalapino observed after his 1973
visit: There
is serious risk that one may be badly misled by what one sees, hears, and instinctively feels [in
China]. This is partly due to the tendency within all of us to superimpose our own values and cultural
perspectives on another environment. Such tendency surely exists, and for some, it represents an ever-present bias. Their writings consequently reveal far more about
their own views of their own social order than about China. Each individual, in any case, carries his prejudices with him in some measure, and he may well reinforce them as
he goes.21 "Because China is so vast," James Palmer recently observed in the Washington Post, "its successes can be attributed to whatever your pet cause is.22 In short,
Americans see what we want to see in China, and what we want to see most, argues Michael Pillsbury, is ourselves: "In our
hubris, Americans love to believe that the aspirations of every other country is to be just like the United States. In recent years, this has governed our approach to Iraq and
Afghanistan. We cling to the same mentality with China."23 American misunderstanding has been facilitated by Beijing's courting of influential Americans. China
has
done a better job at using engagement to improve American perceptions of China than America has done in changing
Chinese perceptions of U.S. intentions. The Communist Party of China (CPC) uses bilateral engagement to assess U.S. capabilities,
collect intelligence, and manipulate their American counterparts. Extensive economic, educational, scientific, cultural, and
personal ties allow the CPC to build a large, loose coalition of Americans to carry the message that Beijing is
Washington's indispensable partner.24 U.S. officials, however, are generally ignorant of CPC objectives and
tactics toward them, collectively known as the United Front Doctrine. Americans interact with only a "thin outer crust" of Chinese
policymakers.25 Each institution has an office that deals specifically with foreign visitors, and the party maintains dozens of front groups that conduct hundreds of
interactions and conferences every year with Americans. The CPC's International Department's front organization is the China Center for Contemporary World Studies; the
Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs and the China Institute of International Relations are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' front groups; the Ministry of State
Security's is the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, and so on. The CPC has also created entities specifically to conduct "host diplomacy" with
Americans, including the Hong Kongbased ChinaUnited States Exchange Foundation, which "promotes the positions of the Chinese government through the research
grants it gives to American institutions.26 These groups both observe Americans and work to influence their views through dialogues and the distribution of English-
language propaganda with titles such as The Strength of Democracy: How Will the CPC March Ahead.27 Information
asymmetry is a longstanding
aspect of U.S.-China relations, but has become increasingly problematic since President Xi Jinping took power in 2011.
In July 2015, China enacted new laws regulating all aspects of Chinese interaction with foreigners, including a national
security law that covers every domain of public life in Chinapolitics, military, education, finance, religion, cyberspace, ideology and religion. These initiatives are "aimed at
exhorting all Chinese citizens and agencies to be vigilant about threats to the party.28 They
help explain why Washington's engagement
strategy has been unable to change party leaders' perceptions or successfully support moderates
over hawks. The consequence of Americans knowing so little about the CPC and its strategies and tactics towards them is that many Americans continue
to be badly misled by what they hear and see in China. The extensive U.S.-China engagement architecture has
produced analytical limitations, or blind spots, within the U.S. policy community that if remain unaddressed are likely to produce the same types of
intelligence failures that have occurred repeatedly in U.S.-China relations since 1911. The only way to redress these systemic deficiencies is to move beyond engagement and
containment and adopt a nuanced strategy that prioritizes high quality human intelligence about Chinese leaders and policymaking and incorporates them effectively into
U.S. policymaking towards China.
 AT: Relations spillover

Divergent interests prevent genuine cooperation strategic competition is inevitable

Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 259-260)
Enhancing engagement without doing more to
The problem with this approach is not so much what it includes as what it leaves out.
maintain a favorable balance of power amounts to doubling down on an already risky bet. It is like pushing more
and more chips onto a single square at the roulette wheel, or building a new addition to a house that sits astride a geological fault line, while simultaneously cutting back on
homeowner's insurance. Will the gamble pay off? Broadening and deepening engagement could lead to greater cooperation on some issues
of concern to both Washington and Beijing, but recent experience suggests that Americans should not get their hopes up. The
reason why the United States and China have failed to work more closely on combating terrorism, countering proliferation, disciplining
"rogue regimes," and reducing their bilateral trade deficit is not a shortage of dialogue but a divergence of interest. To believe
that more, higher-level talks will persuade Beijing to see things Washington's way, accept its rules, and follow its
lead, even as China's power grows and its options expand, is either naive or condescending, and quite possibly both. Given the
differing interests of states at very different stages of industrial development, it also seems fanciful to suggest that the struggle to control carbon emissions can, in itself,
provide the cornerstone of a new, improved Sino-American relationship. Indeed, this problem seems at least as likely to be another source of contention between the Pacific
powers as it is to be the seed from which a new entente will grow. Cooperation
on climate change is no doubt desirable, but that
does not mean it will be achieved, still less that confronting this danger will transform the character of world politics. Even if the
engagers' fondest dreams come true, and dialogues of every shape and size spring forth, the mixed, and mutually
mistrustful, relationship between the United States and Communist-ruled China will remain fundamentally unchanged. Americans
will still look askance at a government they see as repressive, secretive, and lacking in democratic legitimacy, and they will continue to worry that as its power grows, the
China's rulers will no doubt welcome the chance to
current Chinese regime will seek to displace the United States as the dominant power in Asia. For their part,
draw closer to Washington and they will be delighted to receive fewer lectures about human rights. But they will
continue to see America as a nation
determined to cling to its hegemonic privileges and driven by its ideology to seek their eventual removal from
power.

Domestic forces make sustained cooperation impossible the plans gains will be
reversed
Steinberg & OHanlon 12-* Dean of the Maxwell School, Syracuse University and University
Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law, ** senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings
Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force(James, Steinberg, Strategic
Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.- China Relations in the Twenty-First Century,2014, Princeton University
press, pg. 24-25)//SL
Regime Type Another potential source of conflict between the United States and China derives from the two
countries political and economic regimes. There are several strands to this argument. First, stemming from variants of so- called
democratic peace theory, is the view that the possibility of conflict between two states is enhanced when one of the
countries is nondemocratic that the absence of democratic checks on expansionist or aggressive actions, in this case within China, makes conflict more
likely. (This argument is somewhat in tension with the view that growing democratization in China could itself contribute to conflict, which will be discussed shortly.) A
second factor stems from the role of democracy and human rights promotion as core elements of U.S.
foreign policy. In the United States, this policy is justified as a support for universal norms (embodied in the UN Charter and Declaration of Human Rights) rather
than an attempt to undermine the Chinese Communist Party. Nonetheless, many Chinese argue that this strategy of peaceful evolution
is a thinly disguised effort to undermine the regime.9 These sources of conflict are exacerbated by divergence on the economic front, where
Chinas statist model is seen to pose a direct threat to U.S. interestswhether through manipulation of the value of the RMB currency, favoritism to Chinese industries
(through the doctrine of indigenous innovation), explicit and hidden subsidies to Chinese manufacturers, or even state complicity in intellectual property theft. Conversely
China sees U.S. advocacy of liberal trade and investment policies as threatening to Chinas prosperity. Another factor associated with regime type
that contributes to the risk of conflict is the closed nature of Chinese government decision making. Secrecy and lack
of transparency are the hallmarks of leadership deliberations, especially on matters related to national security. This fuels U.S. suspicion and mistrust and reinforces concerns
that certain elements of the Chinese policy elite such as the PLA may have undue influence on some decision
making. From the Chinese perspective, the highly pluralist nature of the U.S. government, including the overlapping and sometimes conflicting roles of Congress, the
executive branch, and courts, leads to questions about the sincerity and reliability of American commitments. For China, a case in point was the adoption of the Taiwan
Relations Act immediately after the abrogation of the U.S.- Taiwan Security Treaty by the executive branch (following the agreement on normalizing U.S.- PRC relations).
Domestic Political Factors Like structural factors, domestic
political considerations in each country also suggest a mix of forces
potentially leading to either cooperation or conflict. On the optimistic side, there are many elements of the U.S.-China relationship that have
positive-sum effects on domestic constituencies, such as the workers in China who benefit from exports to the United States and the consumers in the United States who
benefit from Chinas low-cost production. Chinas large holdings of U.S. debt help keep interest rates low in the United Statesa benefit to both the taxpayer and the
homebuyer. U.S. farmers and aerospace workers benefit from exports to China, as do their Chinese customers. But domestic political considerations
also contribute to conflict. First, while in each country there are constituencies that benefit from the relationship, there are also those who feel victimsbe
they U.S. textile workers and tire manufacturers or Chinese workers in state- owned enterprises who are at the losing end of U.S.-brought World Trade Organization cases.
Moreover, there are important asymmetries between those who gain and those who losewith the pain of the losers often being concentrated and deep (e.g., loss of jobs)
while the benefits are more broadly spread and shallower (as with lower prices to consumers). In China, rising national pride and memories of past humiliations put
increased pressure on leaders not to compromise with foreigners, including Americans. This nationalism is fueled by the emergence of a vibrant and often virulent
community of microbloggers who challenge leaders at any sign of weakness. The Communist Party is especially susceptible to these pressures, given its dependence on
nationalist credentials as an element of its legitimacy. In the United States, too, nationalist
perspectives tend to increase anxieties about
Chinas rise, fueled by a narrative dating back to the Chinese Civil War about who lost China. Ideologically oriented
cable news, radio, and Web sites play a role comparable to the microblogging site Weibo in the PRC. Although polling in the United States consistently shows no strong
sentiment against China, only 37 percent of Americans expressed positive views of China in a 2013 Pew survey (while only 40 percent of Chinese indicated positive views of
the United States).10 Issues like Taiwan and trade tensions as well as cyber security provide ample grist for critics.
Problems of history such as Chinas role in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and Tiananmen, lurk in the background as well.
Overall, uncertainty about where the relationship is now headed in light of Chinas rise contributes to a certain tension in the publics overall mood about the PRC. Indeed,
at most points over the last twenty years, 40 percent or more have worried about China as a future threat even as they have also tended to view U.S.-C hina relations in the
present as reasonably good. Surveys indicate that the next generation of American leaders holds similarly mixed views about China.11 The Way Forward: Managing the U.S.-
China Strategic Relationship The foregoing discussion illustrates that there are profound forces at work that could undermine the goal
of avoiding conflict and maximizing cooperation even though both countries have much to gain by a positive relationship. Without an explicit
effort to address these sources of conflict through the tools of what we call strategic reassurance, the prospects for a poor outcome are great. Since neither side can
guarantee the other what the goals and ambitions of future leaders might be, they need to craft a set of actions today that will reinforce the benefits of cooperation while
undercutting the perceived necessity for hedging and confrontation, consistent with eachs national interest.
 AT: Not zero sum

Chinese leaders view competition with the US in zero sum terms

Chang, 11 Chang lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in
Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss. He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard,
Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, the
Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other
institutions. He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
State Department, and the Pentagon. (Gordon, China Takes on America in a 'Zero-Sum Game' World
Affairs Journal, 11/22, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/china-takes-america-zero-
sum-game
What is the best way for China to take over the world? Yan Xuetong of Tsinghua University suggests a game plan in his Monday New York Times op-ed, first published
online on Sunday. In How China Can Defeat America, Yan, perhaps Beijings leading international relations analyst, argues that,
even without democracy, China can present a more attractive model to the world than the United States and therefore win over allies around the globe. It is the battle for
peoples hearts and minds that will determine who eventually prevails, Yan writes. As Chinas ancient philosophers predicted, the country that displays more humane
authority will win. In making his points, Yan distorts Chinese history, misdescribes the current global situation, and maligns the United States. Yet along the way he also
performs a valuable service for Americans, giving them an opportunity to view his government in a more realistic light. In the provocative op-ed, a distillation of his recently
released book, Yan explains that competition between Beijing and Washington is inevitable. And then he ends his piece with this thought: Chinas quest to
enhance its world leadership status and Americas effort to maintain its present position is a zero-sum game.
Zero-sum competition? Thats not the way Washingtons foreign policy specialists see the international
system. Since the end of the Second World War, they have believed that every nation can better its lot with free markets, free trade, and free politics. Chinese leaders
have eschewed all three of these Western concepts, but they have appropriated that awful phrase, win-win, and assure us they believe in it. With a win-win mind-set,
governments around the world have sought to engage China, nurture it, and ease its entry into the international community. Naturally, the Chinese state has prospered in
such a benign environment. But instead of accepting the international system as it wasthe fond hope of the engagersBeijing has
sought to upend and replace it with something more friendly to its brand of authoritarianism. In short, liberal
institutions are seen as a threat to Chinas one-party state, and so it should come as no surprise that its leaders
view geopolitics as an I-win, you-lose proposition. Should the United States change its conception of geopolitics in response to Beijings world
view? No. Yet one thing is clear: the global community needs to understand that engagement with China has not changed the darkish
perspectives of its leaderswho continue to believe that it is in their interests to undermine America and its many
friends.

China and the US are dominated by zero sum thinking

Swaine, 15- senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace( Micheal, Beyond American
Predominance in the Western Pacific: The Need for a Stable U.S.-China Balance of Power, Carnegie
Endowment For International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyond-american-
predominance-in-western-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-china-balance-of-power)//JS
In 2011, I argued in a book entitled Americas Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century, that, while Washington and Beijing are by no means fated to
enter into a hot or even a cold war,
the competing assumptions they hold regarding the necessary conditions for long-term
stability and prosperity in Asia, if not moderated through a process of mutual accommodation, would likely
result in steady movement toward a zero-sum, adversarial mind-set. I wrote that this dynamic could eventually polarize the region and
undermine the goals of continued peace and prosperity toward which all sides strive. Unfortunately, in the past three years, this type of mind-set
has deepened, in and out of both governments and across much of Asia. Indeed, the international media, along with a coterie of regional and international
relations specialists, increasingly seem to interpret every action taken by one government, no matter how small, as
being by necessity designed to diminish the position of the other. Even more worrisome, this deepening mind-set is
driving policy statements and recommendations in Beijing and Washington that serve to reinforce and strengthen,
rather than moderate, the differences between the two sides. While Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, speaks of the need to develop an Asia for
Asians and to create a new regional security architecture as an alternative to the Cold War era U.S.-led bilateral alliance structure, American policymakers and analysts
criticize Beijing for establishing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea of the sort long possessed by Washington and Tokyo and encourage other
Asian states to resist joining Chinese-initiated economic institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
 AT: Credibility theory false

Their indict of credibility assumes states have perfect knowledge of intentions prior
actions inform expectations of future behavior on unrelated issues
Glaser, 15 - Charles L Glaser is a professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs and the Department
of Political Science at George Washington University. He is also a fellow in the Kissinger Institute at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? International Security,
Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 4990, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00199
The opposing strand of the credibility debate holds that a states past actions do not influence its credibility.
According to this line of argument, credibility depends only on an opposing states power and interests, both of which are known, not on its past behavior.21 This
formulation, however, mischaracterizes the issue of credibility by assuming that the adversary essentially knows
the extent of the states interests. Uncertainty about the states interests, however, lies at the core of the
adversarys uncertainty about the states credibility. This in turn creates a role for past actions to influence current
assessments of credibility. And, although the adversary may be nearly certain that the state places an extremely high value on defending its homeland, the
adversary is likely to be more uncertain about the value that the state places on defending its allies and lesser interests. Given this uncertainty, if the adversary sees logical
similarities between the two issues, one would expect that a states policy toward a lesser (but possibly still important) interest would enable an adversary to update its
assessment of the states interests and, in turn, of the credibility of its commitments. For example, ending an alliance could lead an adversary to reduce its assessment of how
likely the state would be to meet certain other alliance commitments. The magnitude of the change would depend on the size of the accommodation, the extent of
uncertainties about the states interests, and the similarity between the terminated and the continuing alliances. In addition, if
the adversary believes that a
structural change caused the state to adopt accommodation, it will see a similarity across otherwise disparate
issues that are affected by the structural change and will, therefore, reduce its assessment of the states
credibility on all of these issues.

China believes the credibility thesis

Yan, 14 - Professor and Dean of Institute of Modern International Relations, Tsinghua University (Xuetong,
From Keeping a Low Profile to Striving for Achievement Chinese Journal of International Politics Volume
7, Issue 2Pp. 153-184, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/2/153.full KLP = describes the Keeping
a Low Profile foreign policy of Deng Xiaoping
Credibility is regarded as a key factor for a good leader, and strategic credibility is a precondition for
becoming a humane authority or a hegemon in Chinese traditional political thoughts. The fact that Xi adopted
credibility as one of the four foreign policy principles shows that Chinas foreign policy is transformed
from weak-state diplomacy to strong-power diplomacy. After the Cold War, daguo waijiao (major country diplomacy) in Chinese official
documents referred to Chinas policy toward those countries stronger than China, such as the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK. The meaning of
this phrase changed in Wang Yis speech titled Exploring the Path of Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics in June 2013. The term of major country no
longer refers to foreign powers but to China itself.53 Besides the new meaning of major country policy, the principle of credibility also implies that China will undertake
more international responsibility on international issues, especially security ones. In contrast, the KLP strategy never touched on the concept of credibility because credibility
means too much international responsibility and a leadership role. Credibility is opposite to the principle of undertaking no leadership.
uq
normal
 AT US wins
China lacks the capability to push the US out only US concessions can alter the
balance of power
Roy, 13 Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu who specialises in Asia-Pacific international
security issues (Denny, The Problem with Premature Appeasement Survival, 55:3, 183-202, DOI:
10.1080/00396338.2013.802861
Whites policy recommendation asks Washington to accept defeat prematurely. China has not yet caught up
economically. Its gross domestic product is about half that of the United States. No serious military analyst
suggests the PLA is a match for US military forces in the Pacific. If war broke out today, the most the Chinese could
realistically aspire to would be to destroy a major US warship, while it would not be an unrealistic goal of US
forces to sink the entire PLA Navy. Beijings increasing confidence in challenging the US role in the Asia-
Pacific region is largely based on the expectation, which White shares, that present trends will continue and Chinas
strength, relative to that of the United States, will increase. This expectation is certainly defensible, as Chinas faster rate of economic growth suggests it will
overtake the United States in economic output in approximately a decade.21 With the worlds largest economy, China would have the wherewithal to build strong military forces and wield unparalleled
influence with its many trading partners, laying the foundation for its challenge to US supremacy in the Asia-Pacific. But this premise is highly controversial, and the obstacles that
could prevent China from achieving such regional dominance are significant. Former US ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, one of the United
States foremost China experts, is among those who conclude that it is foolish to postulate that the twenty-first century will belong to China.22 Over the next decade, China will face

many internal obstacles to its rapid economic growth. The factors that have driven its expansion in the post Mao era chiefly an abundant supply of
cheap labour and capital, alongside worldwide demand for Chinese exports are diminishing. Many economists believe that
Chinese economic growth will decrease to a rate closer to those of todays developed economies within a decade or two.23 The effect of Beijings one-child policy will begin to impair the countrys
productive capacity. Chinas fertility rate has dropped to 1.4 births per woman: below the developed country rate of 1.7 and far below the population replacement level of 2.1. The majority of Chinese
factory workers are between the ages of 20 and 24, and the number of people in this age bracket will decrease by 42% in 201030. This reduction in factory workforce will be compounded by an
increasing number of young adults pursuing university studies. It is estimated that the number of people in this age bracket available for factory work will therefore soon shrink by around 50%.
Additionally, national savings will decline as the population ages, and the number of Chinese over the age of 60 will double in 201030. During this period, the number of workers supporting each
retiree will drop from five to two.24 To maintain the economys growth, Chinese leaders must rebalance and restructure it to rely on innovation and domestic consumption rather than infrastructure
investment and exports. Beijing is aware of the need for changes. Outgoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao famously said Chinas growth is unbalanced, unsustainable and uncoordinated.25 The Chinese
Communist Party, however, is conservative and wary of social turmoil. The required changes would be opposed by powerful special interest groups and would roil much of Chinese society. The greater
transparency and rule of law needed to boost entrepreneurship and innovation are implicit political challenges to Beijings leadership. It is unclear whether Chinas rulers will be bold enough to fully
implement the necessary reforms. China is a major economic and military power. It is not, however, strong enough to dominate
the region. War with the United States would be so devastating that the Chinese leadership could not contemplate
it unless a vital Chinese interest was under attack. Chinas continued ascension to a position of strength from which it could expect to prevail at acceptable cost in a regional conflict against US forces
or against two or more of its neighbours is uncertain. It would be unwise for the United States to make large concessions to China to

prevent a scenario that may not occur.

US defense cooperation is still capable of deterring China

Ross, 13- Robert S. Ross is a professor of political science at Boston College, associate of the Fairbank
Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, senior advisor of the security studies program at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Specializing on Chinese foreign and defense policy and U.S.-China relations. (Robert, US grand strategy,
the rise of china, and US national security strategy for East Asia, Strategic Studies Quarterly,
8/13/2013, 7(2), 20-40, ProQuest//DK
The United States has also strengthened its forward presence in East Asia through cooperation with its
regional security partners. Despite domestic political complications in Japan over Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa, cooperation has continued
to expand between the US and Japanese militaries, including exercises focused on defending Japanese-
controlled islands claimed by China. The 1999 completion of the deep-draft-vessel pier at Singapores Changi
port facility provided the US Navy with a modern and comprehensive aircraft carrier facility in the South
China Sea. In 2005, Singapore and the United States signed the Strategic Framework Agreement, consolidating
defense and security ties and enabling greater cooperation in joint naval exercises.21 During the George H. W. Bush administration,
the United States developed greater defense cooperation with the Philippines. It expanded access for US naval ships to Philippine
waters, and between 2001 and 2005, annual US military assistance to the Philippines increased from $1.9 millionto approximately $126 million, making it the largest recipient of US military assistance in
East Asia.22 The US Navy also expanded its access to Malaysias Port Klang in the Strait of Malacca.23 More recently, during the Obama administration, the United States further expanded US-
Philippine cooperation with increased arms sales, including coastal patrol ships and the expansion of US-Philippine naval exercises, while reaching agreement for US Navy access to its former base at
Subic Bay.24 The administration has also developed improved defense cooperation with Indonesia and New Zealand and reached agreement with Australia for stationing US Marines on its military
Ongoing modernization of US defense capability has been especially important for balancing
training base in Darwin.

the rise of China. The development of ISR based weapon systems, including remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)
and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), is an effective response to Chinas development of antiship
missile capability. These systems will reduce the vulnerability of US regional power-projection operations
while contributing to its antisubmarine warfare capability vis--vis Chinas growing and advanced submarine
fleet.25 The deployment of advanced armaments in underwater platforms, including Tomahawk cruise
missiles on Ohio-class submarines, is a similarly effective response to Chinese military modernization. US
defense modernization has sustained the ability to deter Chinese use of force to challenge the
regional order. Although the PLA dominates Chinas land borders, its navy remains grossly inferior to the US Navy.26 It continues to depend on small
coastal administration and coast guard ships for its maritime activities in disputed waters in the South China
Sea, and its antipiracy activities in the Gulf of Aden consist of unsophisticated operations conducted by very
few ships. Chinas surface ship capability remains weak; its new aircraft carrier is undersized, lacks aircraft,
and is highly vulnerable to US forces. It is primarily a prestige ship rather than a warfighting ship.27 China has
just begun construction of its next-generation guided-missile destroyer. Both the quantity and quality of
these ships will be vastly inferior to US Aegis-equipped destroyers. The DoD reported that in 2011 less than
30 percent of PLA surface forces, air forces, and air defense forces were modern and that only 55 percent
of its submarine fleet was modern.28 The recent eagerness of US regional strategic partners to
consolidate defense cooperation with the United States reflects its continued dominance vis--vis
China and confidence that it can provide for their security despite Chinese opposition.
 Non UQ- dialogue happeing now

Status quo engagement with China has been shallow, lacking in meaningful
outcomes, and largely for symbolic purposes
Stanton 15 Director of the Center for Asia Policy at National Tsing Hua University and former director
of the American Institute in Taipei (William, US Policy Towards Xi Jinpings China, Thinking Taiwan,
September 19th, 2015, http://thinking-taiwan.com/u-s-policy-xi-jinpings-china/) // EDP
The second argument made by Nixon and Kissinger for improved relations with China and frequently deployed even now is quite reasonable in theory. It is that Chinas
size, power, and UN status as a permanent member of the Security Council make it unavoidable that we cooperate with China to resolve regional and global problems
around the world. In
practice, however, such cooperation has been largely illusory when you search for concrete
positive outcomes from a U.S. perspective. For example, Nixon and Kissinger both hoped that one immediate payoff of the opening to China would be an end
to Chinese political and military support for the Vietnam War, thereby bring about a quicker and more peaceful end to the conflict. That of course never happened.
Another example of alleged cooperation is North Korea. From the first round of much ballyhooed Six-Party Talks in August of 2003 through the last round in August of
2007, Washington frequently praised Chinese cooperation and support for making the talks possible. In the final analysis, however, the
talks did not halt
North Koreas nuclear program and Beijing consistently weakened UN resolutions and UN sanctions aimed at ending
Pyongyangs weapons programs. Meanwhile, a key reason for this failure from early on until now was that Beijing has never strictly enforced those UN sanctions against
North Korea that might have made it more compliant. Luxury goods, for example, never stopped entering North Korea to bolster the Kim familys hold on power.
Whatever dissatisfaction Beijing feels toward Pyongyangs disobedient leadership, it wants North Korea to continue to exist as buffer state dividing the Korean peninsula.
Similarly, while I personally strongly support the Iranian nuclear agreement which the United States reached on July 14 in cooperation with China, Russia, Germany, the
UK, and France, I
find it rather odd that President Obama should have specifically thanked Xi Jinping for the role
Beijing played in reaching the agreement. In the run-up to the agreement, media reports had indicated that in general Russia and China generally lined
up against the U.S. and its three European partners in the negotiations, as is the case in all discussions of most UN Security Council resolutions. Moreover, why thank China
when surely it is as much in the interest of China as any other country worried about Islamic extremism to halt Irans nuclear weapons program? The even greater
irony in praising China for the nuclear deal, however, is the substantial evidence over the years of the key role the PRC
itself played in advancing Irans nuclear program, as was also the case with Pakistan and North Korea. As Orde F. Kittrie reminded us in a July
13 article this year for Foreign Affairs, little attention has been paid to the longtime leading suppliers of Irans nuclear program: ostensibly private brokers based in China
who, according to U.S. federal and state prosecutors, have shipped vast quantities of key nuclear materials to Iran. Even at the peak of international sanctions against Iran,
China has reportedly made little to no effort to stop these or other such brokers. This is of course not news. In the Winter issue of Washington Quarterly in 2011, John
Garver asked Is China Playing a Dual Game in Iran? He concluded that it was. On the one hand, he argued, Beijing wants to maintain an overall appearance of strategic
cooperation with the United States to achieve its development goals, while on the other hand it wants to maintain access to Iranian oil and gas, a sector in which China had
become the worlds leading foreign investor by far by 2010. Chinas dubious record of not halting the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is one of the key reasons for
ongoing Congressional debate this summer over renewal of the peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with the PRC that the Reagan Administration negotiated nearly 30
years ago and is set to expire in December. Thomas Countryman, the top State Department official on nonproliferation, in a congressional hearing on July 16 acknowledged
China has yet to show the necessary capability and will to stop illicit transfers of sensitive technology to Iran. The other reason for the debate is concern that China
adapted U.S.-designed coolant pumps for nuclear reactors for military purposes on its nuclear submarines. Nonetheless, most observers expect the agreement to be
renewed given Xi Jinpings visit to Washington and the huge commercial losses for the U.S. nuclear industry if it were not renewed. So it is clearly an instance of the United
The most recent example of alleged successful cooperation between
States also having a dual agenda of competing interests in China.
the United States and China was the November 11, 2014 Joint Announcement on Climate Change. While clearly a positive
symbolic gesture, critics have rightly pointed out that China is only promising to do what it was already planning to do try to save its own people from choking to
death on pollution. Moreover, at this point it remains more aspirational than real. Much will depend on the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in Paris this coming December which hopes to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate.

No actual cooperation occurs as a result of dialogues

Dingli 16 - Professor and Vice Dean at the Institute of International Studies, Founder and Director of
Chinas first non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security (Shen, Strategic
Dialogue Advances Partnership, with a Limit, China-US Focus, June 14, 2016,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/strategic-dialogue-advances-partnership-with-a-limit//AK)
The US government, however, is keen to address the South China Sea issue, the DPRK nuclear issue, and some regional hotspot such as Iraq and Syria crisis. Exactly in these most important areas that
could alleviate eachs strategic concerns, the S&ED has not been able to reconcile their divergent perspectives. The 8th edition of the S&ED doesnt seem to
narrow the vast gulf existing between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese list of cooperation made no
reference to the South China Sea at all. The Chinese official media has reported Chinese officials view on this issue but made no reference of American officials views.
Apparently, the US has taken Chinese moves in the South China Sea as destabilizing, which warrants Washington

to launch its rebalancing in the region. The US is furthering its program of freedom of navigation in the name of international law to probe and shape Chinas
response. In fact, despite the S&ED, China-US mutual suspicion is deepening rather than decreasing over the past

three years. This is not due to the fault of the dialogue itself, but due to the deteriorating strategic trust that even the S&ED has been
unable to fix. After all S&ED is a means to help stabilize and improve partnership. However, when eachs strategic interests differ or even collide,
a dialogue will not be able to resolve the problem. The best the dialogue could do is to assure that each side will take sensible decisions, ideally through mutual
concession. This is what the S&ED of the Obama era has been about.
 --AT: Dialogues now

Status quo engagement with China has been shallow, lacking in meaningful
outcomes, and largely for symbolic purposes
Stanton 15 Director of the Center for Asia Policy at National Tsing Hua University and former director
of the American Institute in Taipei (William, US Policy Towards Xi Jinpings China, Thinking Taiwan,
September 19th, 2015, http://thinking-taiwan.com/u-s-policy-xi-jinpings-china/) // EDP
The second argument made by Nixon and Kissinger for improved relations with China and frequently deployed even now is quite reasonable in theory. It is that Chinas
size, power, and UN status as a permanent member of the Security Council make it unavoidable that we cooperate with China to resolve regional and global problems
around the world. In
practice, however, such cooperation has been largely illusory when you search for concrete
positive outcomes from a U.S. perspective. For example, Nixon and Kissinger both hoped that one immediate payoff of the opening to China would be an end
to Chinese political and military support for the Vietnam War, thereby bring about a quicker and more peaceful end to the conflict. That of course never happened.
Another example of alleged cooperation is North Korea. From the first round of much ballyhooed Six-Party Talks in August of 2003 through the last round in August of
the talks did not halt
2007, Washington frequently praised Chinese cooperation and support for making the talks possible. In the final analysis, however,
North Koreas nuclear program and Beijing consistently weakened UN resolutions and UN sanctions aimed at ending
Pyongyangs weapons programs. Meanwhile, a key reason for this failure from early on until now was that Beijing has never strictly enforced those UN sanctions against
North Korea that might have made it more compliant. Luxury goods, for example, never stopped entering North Korea to bolster the Kim familys hold on power.
Whatever dissatisfaction Beijing feels toward Pyongyangs disobedient leadership, it wants North Korea to continue to exist as buffer state dividing the Korean peninsula.
Similarly, while I personally strongly support the Iranian nuclear agreement which the United States reached on July 14 in cooperation with China, Russia, Germany, the
UK, and France, I
find it rather odd that President Obama should have specifically thanked Xi Jinping for the role
Beijing played in reaching the agreement. In the run-up to the agreement, media reports had indicated that in general Russia and China generally lined
up against the U.S. and its three European partners in the negotiations, as is the case in all discussions of most UN Security Council resolutions. Moreover, why thank China
when surely it is as much in the interest of China as any other country worried about Islamic extremism to halt Irans nuclear weapons program? The even greater
irony in praising China for the nuclear deal, however, is the substantial evidence over the years of the key role the PRC
itself played in advancing Irans nuclear program, as was also the case with Pakistan and North Korea. As Orde F. Kittrie reminded us in a July
13 article this year for Foreign Affairs, little attention has been paid to the longtime leading suppliers of Irans nuclear program: ostensibly private brokers based in China
who, according to U.S. federal and state prosecutors, have shipped vast quantities of key nuclear materials to Iran. Even at the peak of international sanctions against Iran,
China has reportedly made little to no effort to stop these or other such brokers. This is of course not news. In the Winter issue of Washington Quarterly in 2011, John
Garver asked Is China Playing a Dual Game in Iran? He concluded that it was. On the one hand, he argued, Beijing wants to maintain an overall appearance of strategic
cooperation with the United States to achieve its development goals, while on the other hand it wants to maintain access to Iranian oil and gas, a sector in which China had
become the worlds leading foreign investor by far by 2010. Chinas dubious record of not halting the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is one of the key reasons for
ongoing Congressional debate this summer over renewal of the peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with the PRC that the Reagan Administration negotiated nearly 30
years ago and is set to expire in December. Thomas Countryman, the top State Department official on nonproliferation, in a congressional hearing on July 16 acknowledged
China has yet to show the necessary capability and will to stop illicit transfers of sensitive technology to Iran. The other reason for the debate is concern that China
adapted U.S.-designed coolant pumps for nuclear reactors for military purposes on its nuclear submarines. Nonetheless, most observers expect the agreement to be
renewed given Xi Jinpings visit to Washington and the huge commercial losses for the U.S. nuclear industry if it were not renewed. So it is clearly an instance of the United
The most recent example of alleged successful cooperation between
States also having a dual agenda of competing interests in China.
the United States and China was the November 11, 2014 Joint Announcement on Climate Change. While clearly a positive
symbolic gesture, critics have rightly pointed out that China is only promising to do what it was already planning to do try to save its own people from choking to
death on pollution. Moreover, at this point it remains more aspirational than real. Much will depend on the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in Paris this coming December which hopes to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate.

No actual cooperation occurs as a result of dialogues

Dingli 16 - Professor and Vice Dean at the Institute of International Studies, Founder and Director of
Chinas first non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security (Shen, Strategic
Dialogue Advances Partnership, with a Limit, China-US Focus, June 14, 2016,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/strategic-dialogue-advances-partnership-with-a-limit//AK)
The US government, however, is keen to address the South China Sea issue, the DPRK nuclear issue, and some regional hotspot such as Iraq and Syria crisis. Exactly in these most important areas that
The 8th edition of the S&ED doesnt seem to
could alleviate eachs strategic concerns, the S&ED has not been able to reconcile their divergent perspectives.

narrow the vast gulf existing between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese list of cooperation made no
reference to the South China Sea at all. The Chinese official media has reported Chinese officials view on this issue but made no reference of American officials views.
Apparently, the US has taken Chinese moves in the South China Sea as destabilizing, which warrants Washington

to launch its rebalancing in the region. The US is furthering its program of freedom of navigation in the name of international law to probe and shape Chinas
response. In fact, despite the S&ED, China-US mutual suspicion is deepening rather than decreasing over the past

three years. This is not due to the fault of the dialogue itself, but due to the deteriorating strategic trust that even the S&ED has been
unable to fix. After all S&ED is a means to help stabilize and improve partnership. However, when eachs strategic interests differ or even collide,
a dialogue will not be able to resolve the problem. The best the dialogue could do is to assure that each side will take sensible decisions, ideally through mutual
concession. This is what the S&ED of the Obama era has been about.
 U: US hegemony sustainable

US heg is sustainable
Montgomery, 14- senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments CSBA (Evan,
Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: Chinas Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection,
International Security, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Spring 2014), pp. 130139)//DK
Despite serious disagreements about the future of the United States
Is U.S. Military Dominance Enduring, Under Duress, or Both?

relative power position and the risks of retrenchment, the deep engagement school and the offshore
balancing school agree on one crucial point: U.S. military power will remain sufficient to prevent any
nation from dominating its neighbors through aggression or coercion. This means that the United
States will be able to deter or defeat China if necessarynot because China is the most likely threat to
stability, but because it is the most serious potential threat given the resources at its disposal and the
importance of its region. Of course, both sides recognize that the PRC has been steadily increasing its defense spending and
improving its military forces. Neither side in the grand strategy debate [End Page 121] views these developments as a major challenge to

U.S. military primacy, however, because of their singular focus on global power projection rather than local
power balances. Yet this perspective largely ignores the possibility that the United States could remain dominant globally while losing significant ground locally Military Primacy and the
Barriers to Balancing Proponents of deep engagement generally dispute the claim that U.S. military dominance is eroding and discount the notion that China is becoming a serious strategic competitor.
According to Joseph Nye, [M]ilitary power is largely unipolar, and the United States is likely to retain
primacy for quite some time.14 Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth conclude that the United States
advantage is actually increasing relative to potential rivals. As a result, Chinas economic rise will not demand
a dramatic increase in U.S. military efforts anytime soon.15 Likewise, Michael Beckley argues that in the event of a Sino-
American conflict, the PRCs performance would not necessarily be much better than that of, say, Iraq circa
1991, because the United States retains conventional military superiority over China1 and can easily counter its

offensive capabilities.16 For their part, advocates of offshore balancing believe that U.S. military power has declined
from its postCold War apex. Not only has the emergence of multiple competitors divided Washingtons attention and dispersed its resources, but the proliferation of small

arms and military skill has also made taking and holding territory increasingly difficult.17 Yet the underlying
premise of their preferred grand strategy is that the United States can reduce the size of its armed forces,
pull those forces back from bases overseas, and still ensure that aggressive nations do not dominate
critical regions. In the case of East Asia, for example, offshore balancers are confident that the United States
could prevent a revisionist China from permanently overturning the status quo, even if it became strong
enough to defeat a coalition of its neighbors which, from their perspective, would be the only situation
threatening enough to warrant U.S. military intervention. According to Layne, because U.S. air and maritime
power is based on long-range strike capabilities, Washington can keep its forces in an over-the-horizon
posture with respect to East Asia and [End Page 122] limit itself to a backstopping role in the unlikely event that the
regional balance of power falters.18 What accounts for this consensus? The existing literature identifies two principal barriers
to internal balancing against the United States, both of which suggest that its military primacy will endure
even if its relative economic strength declines.19 First, prospective balancers are likely to incur significant
opportunity costs, because competing with the United States would inhibit their ability to manage more
pressing security challenges. As Robert Jervis notes, while the leading power in a unipolar system is concerned with
everything that happens everywhere, other nations are primarily concerned with what happens in their
neighborhoods.20 In most cases, therefore, they will prioritize addressing nearby threats over counterbalancing a
distant hegemon. Because these objectives ostensibly require very different military capabilities, few nations
can afford to pursue them both at the same time.21 Second, even if prospective balancers were not distracted by more urgent demands on their attention and
resources, they would still incur enormous sunk costs given the magnitude of the United States conventional

military edge. By nearly any measure, the United States possesses the worlds most advanced ground,
amphibious, naval, aerospace, and special operations forces. It also devotes more resources to defense than
almost every other nation combined.22 Most important, its command of the commons provides an unparalleled
ability to deploy, operate, and sustain military units overseas.23 Other nations, by contrast, can conduct large military operations only in close proximity
to their own territory, and it is debatable whether any rising powers, including China, will be able to match the United

States global reach for decades.24 According to [End Page 123] primacy optimists, this gap is so wide that any effort to compete
directly with the United States is futile, so no one tries.25 Even primacy pessimists acknowledge that nations hoping to constrain the United States and
frustrate its objectives must settle for nonmilitary options, including diplomatic, economic, and institutional measures they refer to as soft balancing.26
link
Appeasement links
 Engagement
Rivalry is inevitable expanding economic or political integration of China assists
Chinese ascendancy- this card is sick
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Because the American effort to integrate China into the liberal international order has now generated new
threats to U.S. primacy in Asiaand could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally
Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power
rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy. This strategy cannot be built on a bedrock of containment, as the earlier effort to limit Soviet power was,
because of the current realities of globalization. Nor can it involve simply jettisoning the prevailing policy of integration. Rather, it must involve crucial changes to the current policy in order to limit the
These changes, which constitute the heart of an
dangers that Chinas economic and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally.

alternative balancing strategy, must derive from the clear recognition that preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought
to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century. Sustaining this status in the
face of rising Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States
asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that

consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring
military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict high-leverage strategic harm on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the power-political
capacities of U.S. friends and allies on Chinas periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese oppositionall
The necessity for such a balancing strategy that
while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national interests.

deliberately incorporates elements that limit Chinas capacity to misuse its growing power, even as the United
States and its allies continue to interact with China diplomatically and economically, is driven by the
likelihood that a long-term strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington is high. Chinas sustained economic
success over the past thirty-odd years has enabled it to aggregate formidable power, making it the nation most capable of dominating the Asian continent and
thus undermining the traditional U.S. geopolitical objective of ensuring that this arena remains free of
hegemonic control. The meteoric growth of the Chinese economy, even as Chinas per capita income remains behind that of the United States in
the near future, has already provided Beijing with the resources necessary to challenge the security of both its Asian

neighbors and Washingtons influence in Asia, with dangerous consequences. Even as Chinas overall gross domestic
product (GDP) growth slows considerably in the future, its relative growth rates are likely to be higher than those of the

United States for the foreseeable future, thus making the need to balance its rising power important. Only a fundamental
collapse of the Chinese state would free Washington from the obligation of systematically balancing Beijing,
because even the alternative of a modest Chinese stumble would not eliminate the dangers presented to the
United States in Asia and beyond. Of all nationsand in most conceivable scenariosChina is and will remain the most significant competitor to the United States for
decades to come.6 Chinas rise thus far has already bred geopolitical, military, economic, and ideological challenges to

U.S. power, U.S. allies, and the U.S.-dominated international order. Its continued, even if uneven, success in the
future would further undermine U.S. national interests. Washingtons current approach toward Beijing, one that values
Chinas economic and political integration in the liberal international order at the expense of the United States global preeminence and long-term strategic
interests, hardly amounts to a grand strategy, much less an effective one. The need for a more coherent U.S.

response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue.

 L: Cooperation

New substantive acts of cooperation are concessions to China that embolden

nationalists and creates the widespread perception of US decline
Pickrell 15(Ryan, PhD degree in International Politics and Diplomacy, The Tipping Point: Has the U.S.-
China Relationship Passed the Point of No Return?, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-tipping-point-
has-the-us-china-relationship-passed-the-14168?page=3, 10/26/15, NRG)
Chinas proposed solution to the Sino-American strategic stability issue is the new model of major-country relations, which encourages the United States and China
to avoid confrontation and conflict, respect one anothers political systems and national interestsspecifically Chinas core interestsand pursue win-win cooperation. China is
exceptionally enthusiastic about this proposal and brings it up at every high-level Sino-American meeting. Chinese enthusiasm for the new model of major-country relations can be explained in a
American acceptance of Chinas proposal would facilitate Beijings rise, legitimize the Chinese
number of different ways.

(CCP) as a leader for national strength and revival and reduce the likelihood of American
Communist Party

containment. As acceptance of the new model of major-country relations would create an international environment
conducive to Chinas rise, it would essentially allow China to become the preeminent power in Asia without great
power competition or conflict. This proposal also has the potential to put China on par with the United States, to elevate it to an equal status, one acknowledged by the United States. Not only would
American recognition of Chinas strength and power have effects abroad, but it would also stoke Chinese nationalism and strengthen CCP
leadership at home. Furthermore, this new model is a means of establishing a new code of conduct for the Sino-American relationship that is more in line with Chinese national
interests, opening the door for the creation of a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia and, potentially, a Sino-centric regional order. Prior to the recent meeting between Xi Jinping and Barack Obama, Xi
announced that Chinas proposed new model of major-country-relations would be an important discussion point for the meeting, but, while this proposal was brought up during the meeting, no clear
the United States has repeatedly
progress was made. Because U.S. leaders believe that the new model of major-country relations is not in Americas best interests,

dismissed Chinas proposal. As the hegemonic power, the United States maintains its power by dominating
global politics; to accept a geopolitical framework alternative proposed by a strategic rival requires sacrificing
a certain amount of power and influence. Along those same lines, acceptance of Chinas proposal might give
other states in the international system the impression that the United States is in decline and on the losing end of the classic
Thucydides trap. Outside of traditional power politics, the call for the United States to respect Chinas core interests as many Chinese and foreign scholars have notedis a loaded statement.
While the United States is not opposed to respecting a states national interests, it tends to be unwilling to respect national interests which are highly contested, which is the situation for the majority of
The
Chinas core interests. In addition to traditional Chinese national interests, such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, Chinas core interests also cover most of its territorial claims in Asia.

United States is concerned that Chinas new model of major-country relations is a ploy designed to trick the
United States into acknowledging Chinas extensive territorial claims and undercutting the interests of
American allies and long-time strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region, which would likely result in the weakening of the American-led hub-and-spoke security structure, a security
framework China hopes to replace with its New Asian Security Concept. There are also suspicions in the United States that Chinas proposal is a call for the creation of spheres of influence, a concept
to which the Obama administration has been consistently opposed.
 L: Crisis management

US crisis management causes crisis escalation because China thinks the US will
back down to every provocation. Closing communication channels is vital to
demonstrating resolve
Mastro 15-an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown University, Why Chinese Assertiveness is Here to Stay, The Washington Quarterly, 21 Jan
2015, https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/27434/uploads)//SL italics in original
These efforts are commendablethe United States rightly works to preserve its military superiority and retain its ability to project power in the region. During the Cold War, when the greatest pacing
China is
threats were land conflicts, forward deploying U.S. forces in Europe and Asia were sufficient to demonstrate the credibility of the U.S. commitment to peace in those regions. But

currently testing the waters not because its leaders are uncertain about the balance of power, but because they
are probing the balance of resolve. This means that staying ahead in terms of military might is insufficient in contemporary East Asia. Chinas strategists are betting that the
side with the strongest military does not necessarily win the warthe foundation of the deterrent pillar of its A2/AD strategy. Indeed, Chinas experience in fighting the Korean War proves that a
country willing to sacrifice blood and treasure can overcome a technologically superior opponent.The belief that balance of resolve drives outcomes more
so than the balance of power is the foundation of Chinas new, more assertive strategy; but U.S. responses to date have
failed to account for it. Canned demonstrations of U.S. power fail to address the fundamental uncertainty concerning U.S. willingness, not ability, to fight. The U.S. focus on de-

escalation in all situations only exacerbates this issue. The Cold War experience solidified the Western narrative stemming from World War I that inadvertent escalation
causes major war, and therefore crisis management is the key to maintaining peace.74 This has created a situation in which the main U.S. goal has been de-escalation

in each crisis or incident with Beijing. But Chinese leaders do not share this mindsetthey believe leaders
deliberately control the escalation process and therefore wars happen because leaders decide at a given
juncture that the best option is to fight.75 China is masterful at chipping away at U.S. credibility through
advancing militarization and coercive diplomacy. It often uses limited military action to credibly signal its
willingness to escalate if its demands are not met. Strategist Thomas Schelling theoretically captured this approach when he wrote it is the sheer inability to
predict the consequences of our actions and to keep things under control that can intimidate the enemy.76 Because China introduces risk for exactly this

reason, the U.S. focus on deescalation through crisis management is unlikely to produce any change in
Chinese behaviorif anything it will only encourage greater provocations. Beijing has identified the U.S.
fear of inadvertent escalation, and is exploiting it to compel the United States to give in to its demands and
preferences. In this way, the U.S. focus on de-escalation may actually be the source of instability by rewarding and
encouraging further Chinese provocations. To signal to China that the United States will not opt out of a conflict,
Washington must signal willingness to escalate to higher levels of conflict when China is directly and
purposely testing U.S. resolve. This may include reducing channels of communication during a conflict, or
involving additional regional actors, to credibly demonstrate that China will not be able to use asymmetry of resolve to its advantage.
 L: Economic growth

Increasing economic engagement undermines effective balancing

Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 109)
After 1989 there was an irreducible measure of tension between American efforts to engage China economically while at the same time countering the growth of its military
power. By continuing to open its markets and invest its capital, the United States was contributing substantially to
the rapid expansion of China's GDP. This fueled Beijing's sustained military buildup, which in turn stimulated
Washington to strengthen its Asian alliances and bolster its own forces in the region. Continued engagement thus helped to create the
need for more balancing.

Slow Chinese growth increases regional containment of China and moderates its
behavior
Glaser and Funaiole, 15 *senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS
AND fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Bonnie and
Matthew, Geopolitical Consequences of Chinas Slowdown 11/16,
http://csis.org/files/publication/151116_Glaser_Funaiole_Geopolitical.pdf
Overinvestment in economic initiatives leaves Beijing susceptible to the same vulnerabilities that threaten the Chinese economy.Should the Chinese economy stumble ,
aspects of the AIIB and OBOR will need to be scaled back. The knock-on effects of an economic slowdown could diminish Chinas future role in the region. The smaller countries of Asia have
tolerated Chinese assertiveness in exchange for economic gains and because they fear that challenging China could cause Beijing to punish them economically. If China is no longer able to afford those
many smaller countries may be less willing to show deference and more willing to push back against Chinese threats to
benefits,

their interests. In the South China Sea, where in recent years China has incrementally altered the status quo in its favor, such a development could
have a positive effect. Myriad steps taken by some of the other claimants to the disputed land features, as well as by the United States, Japan, and other concerned
members of the international community, have not persuaded Beijing to moderate its assertiveness and seek cooperative

solutions to the extant territorial disputes. Any reduction in Chinese influence may diminish the disincentives that smaller
claimant states and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) face vis--vis China. Firmer and coordinated policies
among Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, combined with greater unity among all the ASEAN member countries, might induce Beijing to conclude a

binding code of conduct for the South China Sea that ensures disputes are managed peacefully and in
accordance with international law.

China receives higher relative gains from trade that allow it to challenge US power
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Although this last development has generated wealth and welfare gains globally, it has also produced several unnerving strategic consequences. It has made many of Chinas trading partners, especially
Chinas economic
its smaller neighbors, asymmetrically dependent on China and thus reluctant to voice opposition even when Chinas policies leave them disadvantaged.21

integration has also produced higher relative gains for itself, even with its larger trading partners, such as the United Statesnot in the
narrow sense pertaining to the bilateral terms of trade, but in the larger strategic sense that its overall growth has risen far faster than it might have had

China remained locked into the autarkic policies of the pre-reform period. U.S. support for Chinas entry into the global trading system has
thus created the awkward situation in which Washington has contributed toward hastening Beijings economic growth and, by

extension, accelerated its rise as a geopolitical rival. Furthermore, Chinas growing economic ties have nurtured and encouraged various internal
 economic
constituencies within Chinas trading partners to pursue parochial interests that often diverge from their countries larger national interests with regard to China.22 Finally,

integration has shaped the leadership perceptions of many of Chinas trading partners in ways that lead them to worry about their
dependence on and vulnerability to China. Even if such worry is sometimes exaggerated, it weakens their resistance to both Chinese blandishments and coercion.23

Given these outcomes, it should not be surprising that Beijing has consciously sought to use Chinas growing economic power in a

choking embrace designed to prevent its Asian neighbors from challenging its geopolitical interests, including
weakening the U.S. alliance system in Asia. Beijings commitment to sustaining high economic growth
through deepened international interdependence, therefore, provides it not only with internal gainsa more pliant populace and a more powerful statebut
consequential external benefits as well, in the form of a growing military and deferential neighbors who fear the economic losses that

might arise from any political opposition to China. These gains are likely to persist even as Chinas economic growth slows down over
timeas it inevitably willso long as Beijings overall material power and its relative growth rates remain superior to those of its

neighbors.24

China will use engagement to consolidate economic power and challenge the U.S.
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Because these twin expectations have not materialized, Chinas rise as a new great power promises to be a troubling prospect for the United States for many years to come. Chinas
economic growth derives considerably from its participation in the multilateral trading system and the larger liberal
international order more generally, but its resulting military expansion has placed Beijings economic strategy at odds with its

political objective of threatening the guarantor of global interdependence, the United States. At the moment, China displays no urgency in addressing this conundrum,
aware that its trading partners hesitate to pressure Beijing because of the potential for economic losses that might ensue.

Given this calculation, Chinese leaders conclude that their country can continue to benefit from international trade

without having to make any fundamental compromises in their existing disputes with other Asian states or their efforts
to weaken U.S. power projection in Asia. So long as the United States does not alter the intense global codependency that currently defines U.S.-China economic
relations, China is content to maintain the current arrangement.32 China still seeks to cooperate with the United States whenever possible, but only when

such collaboration is not unduly burdensome in the face of common interests, does not undercut its geopolitical ambitions to undermine
U.S. primacy, and does not foreclose future options that might one day prove advantageous to China. Because China recognizes that its quest for comprehensive national power is still
incomplete, it seeks to avoid any confrontation with the United States or the international system in the near term. Rather, Beijing aims to deepen ties with all its global

partnersand especially with Washingtonin the hope that its accelerated rise and centrality to international trade and

politics will compel others to become increasingly deferential to Chinas preferences. Should such obeisance not emerge once
China has successfully risen, Beijing would then be properly equipped to protect its equities by force and at a lower cost than

it could today, given that it is still relatively weak and remains reliant on the benefits of trade and global interdependence. The fundamental conclusion for the United States, therefore, is that China

does not see its interests served by becoming just another trading state, no matter how constructive an
outcome that might be for resolving the larger tensions between its economic and geopolitical strategies. Instead, China will
continue along the path to becoming a conventional great power with the full panoply of political and military capabilities, all oriented toward realizing the goal
of recovering from the United States the primacy it once enjoyed in Asia as a prelude to exerting global influence in the future.
 --Slow growth solves Taiwan

Slow growth prevents China from invading Taiwan

Mearsheimer, 14 - John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of
Political Science at the University of Chicago. He serves on the Advisory Council of The National Interest.
This article is adapted from a speech he gave in Taipei on December 7, 2013, to the Taiwanese Association of
International Relations. An updated edition of his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics will be
published in April by W. W. Norton (Say Goodbye to Taiwan National Interest, March-April,
http://nationalinterest.org/article/say-goodbye-taiwan-9931
By now, it should be glaringly apparent that whether Taiwan is forced to give up its independence largely depends on how
formidable Chinas military becomes in the decades ahead. Taiwan will surely do everything it can to buy time and maintain the political status quo. But if China continues
its impressive rise, Taiwan appears destined to become part of China. THERE IS one set of circumstances under which Taiwan can avoid this scenario. Specifically, all Taiwanese

should hope there is a drastic slowdown in Chinese economic growth in the years ahead and that Beijing also has
serious political problems on the home front that work to keep it focused inward. If that happens, China will
not be in a position to pursue regional hegemony and the United States will be able to protect Taiwan from China,
as it does now. In essence, the best way for Taiwan to maintain de facto independence is for China to be economically and militarily weak. Unfortunately for Taiwan, it has no way of influencing events
so that this outcome actually becomes reality. When China started its impressive growth in the 1980s, most Americans and Asians thought this was wonderful news, because all of the ensuing trade and
other forms of economic intercourse would make everyone richer and happier. China, according to the reigning wisdom, would become a responsible stakeholder in the international community, and its
By trading with China and helping it
neighbors would have little to worry about. Many Taiwanese shared this optimistic outlook, and some still do. They are wrong.

grow into an economic powerhouse, Taiwan has helped create a burgeoning Goliath with revisionist goals that include ending Taiwans
independence and making it an integral part of China. In sum, a powerful China isnt just a problem for Taiwan. It is a nightmare.
 --AT: Growth now

The rate of Chinese growth will determine its ability to challenge the US
Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
The rise of China appears to be changing this situation, however, because this development has the potential to fundamentally alter the architecture of
the international system. If the Chinese economy continues growing at a brisk clip in the next few decades, the United States

will once again face a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return in full force. It is still an open
question as to whether Chinas economy will continue its spectacular rise or even continue growing at a more
modest, but still impressive, rate. There are intelligent arguments on both sides of this debate, and it is hard to know who is right. But if those who are bullish on
China are correct, it will almost certainly be the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century,
for China will be transformed into an enormously powerful country. The attendant question that will concern every maker of foreign policy and
student of international politics is a simple but profound one: can China rise peacefully? The aim of this chapter is to answer that question.
 --Slow growth key to hegemony

Slowing Chinese economic growth is vital to preserving US hegemony

Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
There is a small possibility China will eventually become so powerful that the United States will not be able to contain
it and prevent it from dominating Asia, even if the American military remains forward deployed in that region. China might someday have far more latent
power than any of the four potential hegemons the United States confronted in the twentieth century. In terms of both population size and wealththe building blocks of military powerneither
Wilhelmine Germany, nor imperial Japan, nor Nazi Germany, nor the Soviet Union came close to matching the United States. Given that China now has more than four times as many people as the
United States and is projected to have more than three times as many in 2050, Beijing would enjoy a significant advantage in latent power if it had a per capita GNI (gross national income) equivalent to
that of either Hong Kong or South Korea. All that latent power would allow China to gain a decisive military advantage over its
principal rivals in Asia, especially when you consider that China would be operating in its backyard, while the Unites States would be operating more than 6,000 miles from California.
In that circumstance, it is difficult to see how the United States could prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon. Moreover, China would probably be the more

formidable superpower in the ensuing global competition with the United States. But even if Chinas GNI does not rise to those levels, and it
ends up with not quite as much latent power as the United States, it would still be in a good position to make a run at hegemony in Asia. All of this tells us the United States has

a profound interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slow considerably in the years ahead. That outcome
might not be good for American prosperity, much less for global prosperity, but it would be good for American security,
which is what matters most.
 --Slow growth solves Sino-Japan

Chinese economic decline prevents Sino-Japan war and cements US leadership

Glaser and Funaiole, 15 *senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS
AND fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Bonnie and
Matthew, Geopolitical Consequences of Chinas Slowdown 11/16,
http://csis.org/files/publication/151116_Glaser_Funaiole_Geopolitical.pdf
Similarly, Chinas economic slowdown could offer Japan an occasion to gain leverage in the Sino-Japanese
relationship, creating the possibility to tamp down tensions in the East China Sea and stabilize bilateral ties
that remain a fragile, but critically important, component of the regional security landscape. Perhaps most
significantly, a Chinese economic slowdown affords the United States an opportunity to buttress its political,
economic, and military position in the Asia-Pacific, and assuage worries that the United States lacks sufficient
strategic vision and political commitment to the region. The outcome relies on how Washington plays its
hand, but the result could be the strengthening of a rules-based, U.S.-led security architecture in the Asia-
Pacific region for years to come.
 L: Responsible stakeholder

China wont become a responsible stakeholder it uses the benefits of engagement

to challenge the existing global order
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
The long-term U.S. effort to protect its vital national interests by integrating China into the international
system is at serious risk today because Beijing has acquired the capacity, and increasingly displays the
willingness, to pursue threatening policies against which American administrations have asserted they were hedging. Nevertheless, these same U.S. policymakers have
continued to interact with China as if these dangerous Chinese policies were only theoretical and consigned to the distant future. In short, successive administrations have done much more cooperating
with China than hedging, hoping that Beijing would gradually come to accept the United States leading role in Asia despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least because cooperation was so much
China has indeed become a rapidly growing economy, providing wealth and
less costly in the short term than military, geoeconomic, and diplomatic hedging.

welfare gains both for itself and for American citizens,but it has acquired the wherewithal to challenge the United States, endangering
the security of its allies and others in Asia, and to slowly chip away at the foundations of the liberal
international order globally. In other words, China has not evolved into a responsible stakeholder as then Deputy Secretary of State
Robert B. Zoellick called on it to become.37 Instead, in recent decades Beijing has used the benign U.S. approach to the rise of Chinese

power to strengthen its domestic economy, and thus the CCPs hold on power, to enhance its military
capabilities and increase its diplomatic and geoeconomic sway in Asia and beyond, all while free-riding on the
international order and public goods provided by the United States and its allies.

Chinas core interest to maximize its own power it wont act to preserve the
international system
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Now that China(s) has become a consequential economic power, its membership in the Security Council has only taken on additional significancea fact
highlighted by Beijings determination to avoid any expansion of this body that could dilute its own
longstanding privileges. Even beyond the Security Council, however, Chinas growing material capabilities have ensured that it becomes fundamentally relevant to all institutions
of global order. Unsurprisingly, it has sought increasing power in these bodiesfor example, in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World

Bankto orient their operations toward serving its own purposes. Whether in the functional institutions or in regional ones, China has
indeed gone global, seeking and taking an active role to ensure that the rules made in these bodies not only do not undermine its interests, but also actively advance them.29 In so doing, Chinas
behaviors are similar to those of other previous rising powers in international politics. Chinas widespread participation in international institutions today, nonetheless, has produced a mixed record. In
some cases, Chinas activism has been beneficial for global order, but in many other instances Beijing has displayed an unwillingness to bear the commensurate costs of contributing toward global
China has generally adopted a strategy of burden shifting,
governance. Despite possessing the worlds second-largest economy and military budget,

insisting that the United States and others bear the costs of providing global public goods even as China, citing its
challenges as a developing country, uses them to maximize its own national power. When international institutions are not

perceived as advancing Chinese interests, the Chinese government has attempted to create or strengthen alternatives,
especially ones that exclude the United States. For example, China has sought to integrate both its Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) partners and its regional neighbors into
economic ventures that rival those of the liberal international system, including the New Development Bank (widely perceived as an alternative to the World Bank and the IMF); the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)initiated free trade agreement (FTA) that China has ardently championed; an Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (a rival to the Asian Development Bank); and an Asia-Pacific FTA (that would knit China closer to its neighbors in Asia). In other regions of the world, Beijing has initiated the Forum
on China-Africa Cooperation, the China-Arab Cooperation Forum, and a variety of similar bodies that privilege Chinas position and undermine standards of governance set by the Organization for
The character of Beijings international
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, and other international institutions.

involvement, therefore, suggests that its commitment to the current order is considerably instrumental. China is
content to operate within that order to the degree that it receives material or status benefits, but it has no
fundamental commitment to protecting that system beyond the gains incurred. At one level, this should not be surprising because, as
Kissinger astutely noted, China is still adjusting [itself] to membership in an international system designed in its absence on the basis of programs it did not participate in developing.30 But, when all is
this ambivalence ultimately undermines American national interests and, most important, the premise on which
considered,

the current U.S. strategy of integration is based: that Chinas entry into the liberal order will result over time
in securing its support for that regime, to include the avoidance of threats levied against its principal guardian, the United States.31
 L: Taiwan

A premature settlement on Taiwan ends US naval deterrence and expands Chinese

aggression
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 279-281)
The aspect of America's present position of military advantage that is likely to have the greatest geopolitical
payoff in the long run is its command of the global commons and, in particular, of the world's oceans. Assuming that current trends continue, over the next several
decades China is going to become even more heavily dependent on seaborne imports of energy and raw materials

than it is today. Beijing is already spending a great deal on pipelines and other projects designed in part to mitigate the strategic vulnerability that results from these circumstances, and it has
begun to take steps toward acquiring elements of an oceangoing navy that might eventually enable it to defend its sea lines of communication and perhaps also to threaten those of its neighbors. For a
mix of geographic, economic, technical, and historical reasons, however, Beijing is unlikely to be able to improve its situation any time soon. Assuming that it cannot supply its needs from sources
accessible by land, China is going to have to continue to import energy and other resources by sea, using ships that must travel great distances. along routes that pass through narrow choke points and
dose to the shores of several major competitors, before arriving at a comparative handful of large ports along its eastern coast. n And even if it could somehow reduce its reliance on imported resources,
the vitality of the Chinese economy will continue to depend on its ability to import and export manufactured
products by sea. Like it or not, in the last thirty years China has become a maritime nation. In contrast to India, Japan, and Australia, however, to say nothing of the United States, it has
virtually no experience in building, training maintaining, or operating a blue water navy. It has no modern seafaring tradition and,
at least until quite recently, showed few signs of having a political-naval-industrial complex of the sort that has propelled the acquisition of sea power in other rising states. 24 Unless they believe that
they can fight, win, and resolve a war very quickly, Chinese planners will have to reckon for some time to come with the disruptive
and potentially devastating consequences of a prolonged naval blockade. If only because most conflicts are begun on the assumption that
they will be over "before the leaves fall," there is no guarantee that this will deter war; but it should certainly help. There is one potential wildcard in the deck that American

strategists have only recently begun to ponder. If, in the next few years, Taiwan is absorbed by the mainland, whether through coercion or

consent, and if China is able to use the island for military purposes, the naval situation could change to its
advantage. Using eastward-looking sensors, antiship missiles whose range would now extend farther out to sea, and submarines able to slip easily into the deep waters of the Pacific,
Beijing might be able to impose a counterblockade of its own. Threatening to disrupt shipping flowing north, to Japan and South Korea, or east,
across the Pacific to the Western Hemisphere, would not solve all of China's problems, but it would put it in a better position to dissuade others in East Asia from taking sides with the United States.25
a premature resolution of the Taiwan issue could thus turn out to be damaging, not only
While it might appear desirable on other grounds,

to the security and autonomy of the region's other democracies. 26 It is these countries that
to the Taiwanese people but also

ultimately form the hard core, or rather the sturdy outer rim, of the American position in Asia. Far from being obsolete, the so-called hub-and-spokes
arrangement that took shape during the Cold War remains indispensable. Whatever else it does, Washington needs to tend to its bilateral ties with democratic treaty allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia,
and, to the extent possible, Thailand and the Philippines) and quasi-allied democracies (Taiwan, Mongolia, and, above all, India). Over time, it should seek to establish a similarly close and cooperative
relationship with Indonesia. All of these actors share a commitment to democratic governance and, despite their increasingly tight economic integration, a common desire not to be dominated by China.
Asia's democracies are America's true friends and enduring strategic partners, and America's leaders should not be afraid to say so.

Deterrence, not appeasement is the only way to prevent China from avoiding Taiwan
Cole, 15- analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service( Michael, If the Unthinkable Occurred:
America Should Stand Up to China over Taiwan, The National Interest,
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-the-unthinkable-occured-america-should-stand-china-over-12825)//JS
. By accumulating enough comprehensive national power, and by crossing the
Whites realism isnt a solution; its a recipe for chaos

nuclear threshold, states would have free rein to make irredentist or expansionist territorial claims on weaker states, a
return to the scorpions-filled bottle preWorld War I, only this time the critters are bristling with nuclear weapons. Not only would this invite aggression by

powerful states, it would create incentives for acquiring nuclear weapons and thereby bury existing nonproliferation regimes, not to mention
spark arms races all over the planet. If force is the only determinant of international politics, this is the only foreseeable outcome. Moreover, how much comprehensive power would a state assume is
Abandoning Taiwan to its
necessary in order to get away with aggression? How many nuclear warheads? Rather than bring stability, Whites world would encourage miscalculation.

inevitable fate due to Chinas strength (and nuclear blackmail) would also undermine existing security
alliances and discredit the agreements, legal and tacit, that have helped maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific over the decades. Such signaling
would in turn encourage states in Chinas neighborhood to do the necessary to protect themselves
should the day come when they, too, are left to fend for themselves. It would indicate that good behavior and peaceful democratizationtwo qualities that apply to Taiwanare of no intrinsic value to
mankind and therefore not worth defending. And it would also prove that even medium powers (with a population of 23 million people and the worlds nineteenth-largest economy, Taiwan is not
exactly a gnat) are not immune to the desires of greater powers. Lastly, as I pointed out in my previous piece, there is absolutely no guarantee that after
acquiring Taiwan (on a silver platter or at the end of a rifle), Chinas appetite would be sated. In fact, much like imperialism, territorial expansionism has its own
internal dynamics: the more territory one controls, the greater the incentive to push outwards to protect newly acquired real estate. Should Taiwan become part of

Chinese territory, Beijing would likely seek to protect the island from neighboring countries (Japan, the Philippines) and U.S.
forces in Guam, all of whom would likely have adjusted their military postures due to the proximity of an expanded China to their territories. The vicious circle that this would risk engendering isnt too
that it would be nearly impossible to isolate the absorption of Taiwan from the region
difficult to imagine. All of this shows us

in which that transfer of power would occur. A neutral Taiwan is therefore the surest way to ensure stability in that corner of Northeast Asia all the way to the
South China Sea. To quote from Christopher Clarks The Sleepwalkers, his study of the origins of World War I, far from being inevitable, this war was improbable. The same could be said, perhaps,
of alternative scenarios had the international community presented a more credible challenge initially to Nazi Germany, though as David Faber argues in Munich, 1938, Hitler actually felt hed been
far
stolen the delights of armed conquest by the pact signed with Chamberlain. I am reluctant to use the Nazi analogy when discussing China, but since White raises it, so must I. However, I am

from convinced that China seeks war in the way that Hitler did, and if it did, we would have every reason not
to give it Taiwan and to make sure it is safely contained in its box. There is more reason to believe that Beijing is un-Hitler-like in that it would
heartily welcome a Chamberlain over the Taiwan issue. Opposing authoritarian Chinas designs on Taiwan, and extending to

Taiwanese the right to self-determination that is theirs, also need not inevitably lead to war. As discussed in this article, there
are several steps that the international community and Taiwan itself can take to reduce the risks of war in the Taiwan Strait, chief among them a strong and concerted

deterrent strategy. Surrendering to blackmail by powerful statesWhites prescriptionwould turn back the clock. In fact, doing so would deny those in China who seek alternatives to
belligerence and repression the chance to play a leading role in shaping a new international system. By keeping the aggressors in check, deterrence can buy

us time and facilitate the emergence of a leadership in Beijing that is more liberal and perhaps less inclined to throw its weight around. Conversely,
give in to coercion and you feed the beast.
Engagement politics link story
 2nc engagement politics link

The plan creates rising expectations that will be spun to decrease domestic support
for a balancing strategy
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 265)
Unfortunately, the endless stream of diplomatic happy talk emanating from Washington has done very little to
change Beijing's perceptions of U.S. intentions and strategy; these are as hard nosed and skeptical as ever.
However, the impact of such language on America's domestic discourse has been substantial and problematic. Praising China unduly in hopes that its
accomplishments will someday live up to Washington's lofty rhetoric risks raising public expectations to unrealistic levels, thereby
setting the stage for disappointment and a possible future backlash. Even more important, ceaselessly exaggerating the
quality of Sino-American relations can only make it harder for U.S. political leaders to win support for the
costly and difficult measures that will be needed to maintain a favorable balance of power in Asia. "If
things are so good," an astute taxpayer might well ask, "why do we need to spend billions on arms, bases and alliances in the Western Pacific?"1 Why indeed?

China will use the plan to end political support for balancing until its too late to
challenge it
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 118-119)
In sum, the obstacles to a substantial increase in balancing are many and weighty. They are likely to be broken down by a protracted process of erosion, a sudden crisis or,
perhaps most likely, the former followed by the latter. On the other hand, despite the Obama administration's recent disappointments, a gradual move in the opposite
direction, toward even more engagement and less investment in balancing, appears to be much more plausible.
Putting aside for the moment the question of what the optimal mix of elements would be from a strategic perspective, the political playing field is clearly tilted in a way that
favors such a development. Uncertainty over China's trajectory could also help to make such a shift in the overall mix of U.S. strategy more likely. There
will
always be debates, as there are now, over the scope, pace, and significance of China's military buildup and the meaning and
sincerity of its diplomatic initiatives. For as long as the country is ruled by a closed and secretive regime, there will be doubts among outsiders about the true nature of its
intentions. If it takes care to conceal its motives and avoid premature confrontations, if
it ensures that its interlocutors and trading partners
continue to enjoy the benefits of engagement, if it can delay the responses of potential rivals and discourage them
from cooperating effectively with one another, China may eventually be able to develop its strength to the point where
balancing appears hopeless and accommodation to its wishes seems the only sensible option. For a rising
power facing a still-strong rival, this would be a prudent path to follow. In fact, as I argue in the next three chapters, it is just such a strategy that has guided China's actions
since the end of the Cold War.
 --AT: No tradeoff / can do both

Friedbergs argument is that grand strategy is a mixture of engagement and

balancing, and that status quo engagement can continue as long as balancing
increases. Our 1nc link says that focusing on increasing engagement undermines
political support for greater balancing
Friedberg, 15 professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton (Aaron, Survival interview: Aaron
L. Friedberg on the debate over US China strategy 5/29,
https://www.iiss.org/en/politics%20and%20strategy/blogsections/2015-932e/may-7114/debate-over-us-
china-strategy-f18a
over the last 20 years or so the United States, across Republican and Democratic administrations, has had a pretty
AF: My starting position for this is to observe that

consistent strategy for dealing with China. There have been variations, but the basic strategy has combined two elements: the need to
engage in diplomacy, trade, scientificeducational cooperation and so on; and balancing efforts to maintain a balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific region that favours the
interests of the United States and its allies. Where there has been variation it has been a matter of emphasis and degree, rather than a fundamental shift. What has happened over the last five or six years,
that mixed strategy has begun to be called increasingly into question, from a variety of different angles. Chinas
I think, is that

capabilities are growing. It is wealthier than ever, it is more powerful militarily than it has ever been, and it is starting to assert
itself more in its neighbourhood and on the global stage, including in ways which are perceived by many people in the region, as well as in the United States and elsewhere, as potentially
threatening to stability. The engagement side of US strategy, I think, was ultimately intended to encourage Chinas leaders to
see their interests as lying in upholding the existing international system, rather than challenging it. It was also intended,
at least originally we havent talked about this so much in recent years to encourage political liberalisation in China. What has happened is that people have begun to realise

that, at least for the moment, China is not liberalising. To some extent, under the new leadership China has gotten tougher and more ideological than it was a few years ago. In
part because of these more assertive behaviours, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain the view that

China just wants to become a member in good standing of the international system. It wants to change some things, starting with its own
neighbourhood in particular maritime disputes, but also US alliances. So China is growing stronger; it is not democratising; and it is behaving in ways that appear challenging. This, naturally, has led to
discussion about whether the current strategy is sustainable, and, if not, what should replace it. In the article, I tried to lay out what seemed to me to be six different positions in this discussion, and to
make the case that they all involve varying mixtures of these same two elements of engagement and balancing. Everything from we should redouble our efforts at engagement, and we should not do
things by way of balancing which might stimulate a security dilemma and antagonise China. Everything from that to (and I dont think anyone is advocating this yet, but some people in the past have
talked about it) shifting towards a strategy of containment, where engagement would be minimised, and we would emphasise balancing and military competition. Those are the extremes, and there are
various other positions in between. My own view is that the US is not at a point where it is going to abandon the current strategy, and it is a question of how we are going to adjust those elements. In
we need to increase the balancing part of things. We need to work harder, together with our friends and allies, to make
particular, I think

remain strong enough to deter efforts by China to challenge or

sure that the balance of power in the region remains favourable to us, and that we

change the status quo through threats or through the use of force. That, for want of a better term, is what I call better balancing. I dont think we
are going to abandon engagement, or that we should though there are parts of that policy that need adjustment as well.
But the real emphasis, I think, has to be on increasing the balancing part of the strategy.

Moving towards better balancing requires constricting engagement

Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 255)
either the U S can
Eliminating the extremes at either end of the continuum of potential strategies leaves less radical variations on the theme of congagement. Logically spea king there are two broad alternatives, with many possible permutations of each: nited tates

intensify engagement, or it can move in the opposite direction

while holding steady or cutting back on anything that appears intended to counter Chinese power; , maintaining or

partially constricting engagement while stepping up balancing. The first option, a policy of "enhanced engagement," was essentially the one adopted during the opening years of the

I
Obama administration. Notwithstanding its flaws and potential dangers, and despite its evident failure to induce better behavior from Beijing, this is still the approach favored by many American analysts, academics, and policy makers. After identifying the inadequacies of this approach, close in the

mak the case for an alternative strategy of "better balancing

next, and final, chapter by ing .
Nationalism link story
 2nc QPQ nationalism link

Conditional engagement is exploited by nationalist critics to attack CCP legitimacy

Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 99
Fortunately, there are solid responses to these Chinese arguments, some of which are accepted by segments of China's elite. All are based in long-term thinking and a recognition that China has
benefited and continues to benefit greatly from the economic stability and security of the current international system . Nuclear proliferation, terrorists finding safe
haven in poorly governed states, financial instability in its export markets, and potentially catastrophic changes in the global climate would all affect China at least as much as they do any of the advanced
is a particularly hard sell in a country like
democracies. But such a holistic, over-the-horizon approach to current issues is difficult to market in any country, democratic or authoritarian. It

China with very pressing near-term challenges. All countries, even authoritarian ones, have domestic politics. Chinese leaders worry increasingly about
domestic stability and regime legitimacy as the distribution of income grows more stilted, more people lose their land in eminent domain cases, urban housing becomes
unaffordable, and widespread corruption remains largely unchecked. Citizens have recently gained many new forms of electronic communication, with a resulting rise in the number of protests against
the CCP has made postcolonial nationalism a major pillar of its legitimacy. In that context,
local government officials. Moreover,

arguments for expending resources and forgoing economic and diplomatic opportunities in order to coordinate China's policies with former enemies
such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, and onetime European colonialists are a tough sell in China and could easily be exploited
by nationalist critics in the increasingly robust print and electronic media. For this reason and others, the former State Department official and scholar Susan Shirk has called China
the "fragile superpower."2 Diplomats from the United States and its allies have enjoyed limited success in convincing China to make near-term sacrifices.

Such entreaties might appear to be a trap designed to undercut China's overall national power. For example, Professor Pan Wei at
Peking University argues that deeper Chinese integration in what he sees to be a hierarchical U.S.-led international order would make China subordinate to the United States. He rejects "pressure [on]
China to undertake more 'international responsibilities' and follow 'international standards' as defined by the existing regimes in the global hierarchy." He complains that China is often a "victim ... of
another Chinese scholar warns against
that hierarchy," citing China's non- market economy status in the WTO as one example.3 In a somewhat more subtle fashion,

the danger of China being passively "pulled by the nose" by "the West and international society" into accepting
excessive international responsibilities that are divorced from China's actual national capabilities. If China falls for this, he warns, it will become a "loser in the
international competition" (guoji jingzhengzhong chengwei shibaizhe)." 4

That means Xi will take a confrontational stance to deflect criticism which turns the
case
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations & ** chair and chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chair of the
Center for a New American Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London,
the Asia Group (Robert & Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February
2016, http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
Today, Chinas thirty-year era of 10 percent annual growth appears to have ended, with official statistics placing gross domestic product (GDP) growth below 7 percent, the
government reducing its growth target to 6.5 percent, and a number of major banks and respected forecasters arguing the true growth rate is far lowerand will remain
below 5 percent for years.3 In light of this deepening economic slowdown, the future trajectory of Xis external policy
is in question. Some elements, including Chinas geoeconomic policies, will endure; nevertheless, Chinas foreign policy may well be driven
increasingly by the risk of domestic political instability. For this reason, Xi will most probably stimulate and
intensify Chinese nationalismlong a pillar of the states legitimacyto compensate for the political harm of a slower economy, to distract the
public, to halt rivals who might use nationalist criticisms against him, and to burnish his own image.
Chinese nationalism has long been tied to foreign affairs, especially memories of foreign domination and territorial loss. For example, Xi may be less able or
willing to compromise in public, especially on territorial issues or other matters that are rooted in national sentiment, for fear that it would harm
his political position. He may provoke disputes with neighbors, use increasingly strident rhetoric in defense
of Chinas national interests, and take a tougher line in relations with the United States and its allies to shift public focus away
from economic troubles. He may also turn to greater economic protectionism.
Nationalism supercharges the appeasement link demanding concessions bolsters
nationalist outrage, but engagement itself makes China more aggressive
Smith, 15 - Jeff M. Smith is the Director for Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council
(RIP: America's "Engagement" Strategy towards China? 8/3, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-
americas-china-strategy-should-be-13473?page=show
Today, Washington is confronting the dreadful realization that with each passing year, the goals of political
liberalization and peaceful integration appear to grow more distant, while the prospect for conflict with China
draws nearer. Even advocates of engagement, like Dr. David Shambaugh, are warning that the strategy is unraveling
while domestic repression in China is the worst it has been in the twenty-five years since Tiananmen. So what went wrong? After a decade of reaping the benefits of a
soft-power offensive, Chinas peaceful rise took an abrupt turn in the late 2000s. The country that emerged from a unique confluence of events beginning in 2008 has
proven a more assertive, authoritarian and nationalistic rising power. While the precise causes for this shift are still being debated, we know the 2008 global financial crisis
was (mis)interpreted by much of Chinas elite as symbolic of long-term U.S. decline and retreat from the Western Pacific. For some in Beijing, the crisisand Chinas
hosting of the Olympics that yearreinforced the coalescing perception that Chinas long wait to reclaim its position atop the Asian hierarchy had come to an end. Second,
in 2009, Vietnam and Malaysia submitted proposals to a UN commission outlining expanded sovereignty claims in the disputed South China Sea. A surge in provocative
Chinese posturing there followed, culminating most recently in an unprecedented artificial island-building spree that is inflaming regional tensions. In 2012, China assumed
an equally combative posture in the East China Sea after Japan nationalized the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, with Chinese naval and air forays into the territorial
waters of the disputed islands now a regular occurrence. As these events unfolded, China
witnessed the precipitous rise of a new strain of
nationalism, cultivated and magnified by a new media and technology landscape. Once confined to a handful of stodgy Communist Party mouthpieces, Chinas public
space has expanded rapidly in the digital age. While liberal commentary has been heavily restricted, hawkish rhetoric and nationalist outlets like the Global Times have been
permitted to fill the void. This proliferation
of nationalist discourse has partly served the Partys interests, but its also created new
pressures and incentives that reward hardline posturing and raise the political cost of concessions and
compromise. Finally, the early tenure of Chinas avowedly nationalist and politically powerful president, Xi Jinping, has
produced a material rise in domestic repression and tensions with the United States and Chinas neighbors. Xi
has expanded the definition of Chinas core interests, militarized its maritime doctrine, and overseen devastating cyberattacks against the U.S. government. At home hes
adopted a hard line on domestic dissent and launched repeated broadsides against Western values, NGOs and civil-society groups. Depending on whom you ask, these
events either dislodged China from a more peaceful course, or accelerated its path along a preordained, nationalist trajectory. Likewise, Americas
engagement strategy was either flawed from the start, or is simply proving insufficient to cope with the
realities of a neonationalist China. Whatever the case, Xis China has brought the flaws in Americas China strategy into sharper focus. Rapid economic
growth has correlated with greater repression, while efforts at engagement and integration have been met with more brazen
challenges to the status quo.
 L: Reciprocal restraints

Demanding reciprocal restraints emboldens nationalism they see it as an act of

imperialism which turns case
Swaine, 15- senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace( Micheal, Beyond
American Predominance in the Western Pacific: The Need for a Stable U.S.-China Balance of Power,
Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyond-
american-predominance-in-western-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-china-balance-of-power)//JS
On the Chinese side, perhaps the most significant obstacle to undertaking a transition toward a stable balance
of power in Asia derives from the insecurities and weaknesses of the Chinese government, both domestically and abroad.
Chinas leaders rely, for their legitimacy and support, not only on continued economic success and rising living standards, but also on a
form of nationalism that prizes the ability of the regime to correct past injustices meted out by imperialist
powers during Chinas so-called century of humiliation and to stand up to current slights, both real and imagined. Thus,
their policies often capitalize on the resentments felt by many Chinese citizens toward the supposedly
arrogant West and Japan. This viewpoint makes the Chinese leadership hesitant to quell the more extreme forms of
nationalism described above and deeply suspicious of the United States and its allies. It also makes it more receptive to the notion that a rising yet
still underdeveloped and relatively weak China must continue to conceal its military capabilities while developing its overall capacities to the maximum extent possible. In
other words, the Chinese regime is both excessively vulnerable to ultranationalist pressures and disinclined to
contemplate self-imposed limitations on its sovereign rights (for example, with regard to Taiwan) and its political, economic, and military
abilities, especially in Asia. While this does not translate into a drive for predominance, it does make Beijing less willing to accept the kind
of mutual restraints necessary to achieve a stable balance of power in the Western Pacific.
 L: QPQs

Caving to US requests undermines CCP legitimacy and stokes nationalism

Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, google play)
Like Pan, many Chinese commentators view Zoellick's challenge to China as a ruse to get China to foot the bill for something that will benefit the United States and other
countries much more than China. Rather than accepting Zoellick's arguments that global governance is a shared mission
of all the great powers, they wonder why China should "help" the United States with its problems. After all, Washington continues to
sell weapons to Taiwan and support Japanese military enhancements. Since Chinese elites are worried about regime stability and
personal promotion within the CCP, they are likely more concerned about the domestic political need for
near-term job creation at home than the future effects of long-term global warming. They are also likely
worried about nationalist domestic reactions to the appearance that they have thrown longtime diplomatic
partners like North Korea under the bus at the request of the United States, the EU, and Japan. Professor Pan states succinctly, "China
is not keen to help the West to oust their disliked regimes and create enemies for itself."5 Leaders' concerns about such reactions at home
might outweigh any perceived benefits of explaining the long-term connections between regional instability in poorly governed environments and
the harm to China's own national interests. The connections are real and appear to be understood by at least some Chinese leaders, but they are not the
stuff of bumper stickers. As one interlocutor put it in 2011, calls for intense cooperation on global projects evoke little
emotion in comparison to attacks on the "hegemonic" United States or an "unrepentant" Japan. So when Americans
and others ask China to be more assertive on the international stage, they should be careful what they wish
for.

Accepting US demands destabilizes the CCP and bolsters a nationalist takeover

Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 8
Never before has the world been so tightly integrated and interdependent. It is now more vulnerable than ever to transnational threats and contagions, sometimes emanating
from relatively weak actors. But never before has a country as relatively poor as China on a per capita basis held such an important and powerful position in the
international system. The combination of these two factors means that the post-Maoist version of the People's Republic of Chinaan inwardly focused developing country
that since 1978 has generally kept a low profile in international politicsis, by necessity, going to be asked to contribute more to international stability than any developing
country in history. China's well-cultivated sense of postcolonial victimhood renders requests for Chinese cooperation even
more controversial at home, especially on issues that run against its recent diplomatic traditions. Given the
CCP's near obsession with maintaining domestic stability and avoiding the kind of nationalist protests that helped
destabilize the previous two Chinese regimes (the Qing dynasty and the Nationalist government), CCP elites might be very reluctant indeed to
appear to their colleagues and to the Chinese public to be making sacrifices to satisfy the demands of other powers.
This is true even if one can make a sincere and compelling argument that what is being asked of China is in China's
own long-term national interest.

Nationalism prevents China from accommodating foreign pressure

Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 203)
It is analytically useful to ask what explains the acerbic turn in Beijing's foreign policy in 2010. The answer is sobering because most of the factors, unfortunately, are still in
place. Many in China believe China is significantly stronger and the United States weaker after the financial crisis. Domestic voices calling for a more
muscular Chinese foreign policy have created a heated political environment. Popular nationalism, the growth in the number of
media outlets through which Chinese citizens can express their views, and the increasing sensitivity of the government to public opinion have provided space for criticism of
Beijing's U.S. policy. Such critiques have notably come from active-duty military officers and scholars at state-run think tanks and universities. Gone
are the days
when Chinese elites could ignore these hawkish voices. For example, in 2010, during the period leading up to the
transition of power from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping in 2012, Chinese officials had to foster their reputations as
protectors of national pride and domestic stability. Some prominent Party members did not survive, including
Politburo member and Chongqing Party Chief Bo Xilai. Such an environment does not lend itself to accommodation to foreign
pressure or being too solicitous of Washington.
 L: concessions on sovereignty

Chinese domestic stability is on the brink China backing down in sovereignty

disputes will be the tipping point
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 91-93)
In China, continued Party rule is the top security goal. If there is any doubt about this, please note that the People's Liberation
Army is dedicated not to China as a nation but to the Chinese Communist Party. This has always been the case since the days
of the revolution, and if the rhetoric of Xi Jinping and the recently selected leadership of the Party is any indication, it is not going to change anytime soon. One major
problem for the Party in recent years has been the increase in "mass social incidents" (protests and riots) and the suggestion
that Chinese society is increasingly unstable. Before the government stopped publicly discussing the number of such incidents
in the middle of the past decade, it was already reporting as many as 87,000 per year.17 Extrapolating from those trends, some analysts estimate
that there are more than 100,000 of these every year in China today; one Chinese academic study in 2010 put the number as high as
180,000.lS There is little doubt from my many recent trips to China that the public and the government alike are concerned about the
long- term stability of China in a way that they have not been since the years immediately following the
Tiananmen protests and massacre of 1989. Citizens seem frustrated by official corruption, eminent domain
problems related to the fast-paced growth of cities and infrastructure, environmental degradation, and the
unbalanced distribution of wealth. Adding to the unease of Chinese elites are uncertainties about the sources of future Chinese economic growth,
particularly since the financial crisis called into question the reliability of markets abroad. There is, therefore, a growing consensus that China needs to restructure its
economy to become less dependent on trade and investment and to increase the role of domestic consumption, but there is no consensus on how to achieve this
transformation or at what pace.19 All of these changes can create new controversies and dashed expectations, thus sparking new challenges to social and political stability.
Since jettisoning Maoist Communist ideology in the reform period, the nominally Communist CCP
has legitimized itself through fast-paced
economic growth and by nationalism. It portrays itself as an increasingly capable protector of Chinese interests and national honor. The ways
that the CCP has managed domestic dissent in China renders nationalist issues such as Taiwan or other
sovereignty disputes particularly delicate. The central government in China has successfully ridden the waves
of popular discontent by keeping protests local and small and keeping the protestors out of the Party. The higher
authorities have often been able to paint themselves as the solution to local problems by coming in to quell protests, making arrests when necessary, firing and replacing
One reason potential
local officials, and paying off some of the aggrieved citizens. Still, the increasing frequency of the protests is alarming to Chinese officials.
nationalist humiliation is so worrisome to the central government is that people angry at the state for other
reasons can take the opportunity of such a humiliation to criticize government policies using politically correct slogans
fostered for decades by the government's own "patriotic education" campaigns. Take, for example, the urban protests that arose across China over a nationalist issue:
Japan's central government had purchased the disputed Senkaku Islands from a private Japanese family in 2012. One angry Chinese man held a placard that read: "Oppose
Japan, Oppose America, Oppose Price Inflation!" (Fan Ri, Fan Mei, Fan Zhangjia!)20 In so doing, he was linking a serious domestic concern with protests over international
humiliation. Even when the topics of protests appear to remain international in nature, they can have dangerous domestic repercussions for the Chinese economy and
political stability. So protestors targeting "Little Japan" (Xiao Riben) often call on their Chinese compatriots to boycott Japanese products (Dizhi Rihuo!). But a boycott, if
enacted, would severely harm China's own economy. Many products in China bearing Japanese brands are made in-country by Chinese workers in Japanese-invested
factories. Many other domestic and international firms operating in China depend 011 Japanese parts in their transnational production chains. Chinese officials are well
aware of the irony. Anti-Japanese protestors in China often carry portraits of Chairman Mao, indirectly criticizing contemporary leaders for their lack of fortitude on the
international stage in comparison to Mao. Popular calls for national action have grown all the more dangerous for the central
government as individuals and disgruntled groups around the nation can increasingly communicate through
social media. Furthermore, as with most governments and militaries, there is plenty of sincere nationalism within the CCP regime.
Protestors in the future then might find sympathetic ears inside the state security mechanism. Moreover, military
or civilian elites who are unhappy with their colleagues' lack of fortitude on international issues could stir up
popular protest through expanding media channels to pressure more moderate leaders to change policy or, at the
extreme, to help drive them from office. In fact, frustration with insufficiently robust resistance to the United States, Japan, and Vietnam,
for example, has already been expressed in the mainstream press in China, sometimes by active duty or recently retired military officers.
(More broadly, that press, although more open than in earlier decades, is still ultimately controlled by the state.) For these reasons, nationalist humiliation,
particularly as it pertains to issues such as Japan or Taiwan independence, is the third rail of Chinese Communist politics.
Xi wont make concessions on sovereignty issues fears of domestic weakness
prevent
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy & ** chairman and
chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chairman of the Center for a New American
Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group(Robert &
Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
On territorial matters, Xi will be unwilling or unable to make concessions that could harm his domestic
position, and may even seek to escalate territorial disputes against Japan or South China Sea claimants as a
way of redirecting domestic attention away from the economic situation and burnishing his nationalist record. A dangerous but unlikely possibility is
that Xi may even be tempted to use military force to instigate limited conflicts against the Philippines, Vietnam,
or Japan. Given that Japan is a prominent target of Chinas propaganda and media, and that memories of Japans
brutal occupation are still influential, ties between China and Japan may continue to worsen. Xi entered office
suggesting that he would not alter Chinas policies toward Taiwan, but that may change following the election of Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen in January 2016. The DPP has historically been distant toward China, and though it has moderated its pro-independence
stance, its leaders remain opponents of current President Ma Ying-jeous efforts to strengthen economic links with China, skeptics of the 1992 consensus, and critical of the
historic meeting between Presidents Xi and Ma in November 2015. Xis
unbending stance on sovereignty and territorial integrity,
combined with the real domestic political costs he will face if Taiwan makes moves toward independence,
may lead him to react strongly and decisively to any Taiwanese policy under the DPP that is designed to
increase separation between Beijing and Taipei.
 L: North Korea

Xi says no to any compromise on North Korea

Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy & ** chairman and
chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chairman of the Center for a New American
Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group(Robert &
Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
With respect to North Korea, it appears unlikely that Xi Jinpings more assertive foreign policy will lead him to exert meaningful
pressure on the oppressive communist regime. Xis approach has been harsher toward North Korea than that of his predecessors, with Xi
refraining from making a traditional state visit to North Korea, restricting exports of weapons-related materials and chemicals, cutting ties with some North Korean banks,
Even after North Koreas
and publicly reprimanding the regime for threatening regional security.47 This toughness, however, apparently has limits.
January 2016 nuclear test, China has remained unwilling to use its considerable leverage over Pyongyang which
depends on China for food and fuelto change North Korean behavior. In Chinas view, crippling cuts to North Koreas supply of oil and
food would risk chaos in the North, and perhaps even a collapse that could result in a united Korea that is a U.S. treaty ally. Globally,
Xi will maintain a proactive and assertive Chinese foreign policy that involves institution-building and occasional
provocation in order to demonstrate at home that China is taken seriously abroad. Xi will remain firm in the face of external
pressure on the South and East China Seas, human rights, conditions in Tibet and Xinjiang, and diplomatic visits by the Dalai Lama. As China assumes the rotating
presidency of theGroup of Twenty (G20), Xi will continue to challenge the U.S. global financial and security order using institutional methods.
 L: democracy / rule of law good link

Promoting democracy or the rule of law spurs Chinese nationalism and makes a
confrontation inevitable
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p.225-226
Unfortunately, zero-sum views of U.S.-China relations are most popular in China itself. Raised on a volatile blend of Marxism-
Leninism and postcolonial nationalism, many
Chinese elites see the world as a brutal struggle for material power in which
stronger powers will want to oppress a weaker China. As a Chinese academic once told me, John Mearsheimer is seen by
many Chinese as the one honest American strategist, willing to admit that the United States has deep-seated national interests in delaying
and halting China's rise. Many Chinese nationalists treat with suspicion American advice about how to improve
China's foreign policy and reform its domestic governance. They view the "responsible stakeholder" concept
as an unfair burden on China and see the problems the concept is designed to address as being more American, or "Western," than they are Chinese.
They also view U.S. advice that Beijing reduce censorship and repression, improve the rule of law, and
provide legitimate venues for peaceful social discontent as a Trojan horse. Borrowing from official
government propaganda about the dangers of democratization and the loosening of the CCP's grip on power,
they argue that the United States is trying to weaken China by westernizing and splitting it.
 L: Human rights / Tibet / Xinjiang

Demands for cooperation on Tibet, Xinjiang or human rights drive a nationalist

response
Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy & ** chairman and
chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chairman of the Center for a New American
Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group(Robert &
Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
With respect to North Korea, it appears unlikely that Xi Jinpings more assertive foreign policy will lead him to exert meaningful pressure on the oppressive communist regime. Xis approach has been
harsher toward North Korea than that of his predecessors, with Xi refraining from making a traditional state visit to North Korea, restricting exports of weapons-related materials and chemicals, cutting
ties with some North Korean banks, and publicly reprimanding the regime for threatening regional security.47 This toughness, however, apparently has limits. Even after North Koreas January 2016
nuclear test, China has remained unwilling to use its considerable leverage over Pyongyang which depends on China for food and fuelto change North Korean behavior. In Chinas view, crippling
Globally, Xi will
cuts to North Koreas supply of oil and food would risk chaos in the North, and perhaps even a collapse that could result in a united Korea that is a U.S. treaty ally.

maintain a proactive and assertive Chinese foreign policy that involves institution-building and occasional provocation in order to
demonstrate at home that China is taken seriously abroad. Xi will remain firm in the face of external pressure
on the South and East China Seas, human rights, conditions in Tibet and Xinjiang, and diplomatic visits by
the Dalai Lama. As China assumes the rotating presidency of theGroup of Twenty (G20), Xi will continue to challenge the U.S. global financial and security order using institutional
methods.
 L: warming cooperation

The CCP wont make more concessions on climate change it threatens regime
survival
Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, google play)
One would think that China, as an authoritarian state, would find it easier to make sacrifices on greenhouse gas emissions than the democratic United States. But this too
would be naive. As stated above, all
countries have domestic politics, and the CCP is concerned with something even
more serious than elections: regime survival. Job creation and nationalism are the two main pillars of CCP
legitimacy, and climate change negotiations touch directly upon both. There has been a clear correlation
between China's economic growth and its burning of fossil fuels. To curb that growth in the near term for
abstract long-term environmental reasons would be controversial enough. But it would be much more
controversial still to do so at the behest of the United States and other wealthy economies that are still much bigger
polluters than China on a per capita basis and historically have created the bulk of the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today. On the positive
side, it should be noted that the new leadership under Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang so far seems committed to both fighting corruption and cleaning up the local environment,
in part by reducing the rate of coal consumption, an approach that should also limit to some degree China's massive emission of greenhouse gases.45 Overall coal
consumption in China has reportedly leveled off since the 2000s despite continued economic growth and may even have shrunk slightly in 2013, demonstrating that China
might indeed be able to grow economically in the future without burning ever- increasing amounts of coal in the process.46 And in August 2014 companies in the
aforementioned experimental cap and trade zones were fined for exceeding their allotted carbon emissions, suggesting that some level of monitoring and enforcement is
indeed taking place, at least in those locations.47 But
it would constitute a very big change in Chinese Communist Party
practices if environmental issues began to trump job creation in cadres' promotion considerations. Moreover,
when environmental issues do enter into such calculations, they are much more likely to be local
environmental issues that affect Chinese citizens' lives and social stability directlysuch as fine-particulate air
pollution or water pollution than they are to be global environmental issues such as greenhouse gas
emissions. Fortunately, there is significant overlap between the two types of pollution. Reducing coal burning and using more renewable energy sources, for example,
decreases both ground-level fine-particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
 L: International standards

The Century of Humiliation makes China hyper-sensitive to perceived acts of

disrespect the plan makes China a hostile challenger by imposing international
standards on its sovereignty
Lee, 16 - Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles (James Jungbok Lee (2016)
Will Chinas Rise Be Peaceful? A Social Psychological Perspective, Asian Security, 12:1, 29-52, DOI:
10.1080/14799855.2016.1140644 SIT = Social Identity Theory
The Treaty of Nanking (1942), which
Unfortunately, such glorious heyday had come to an end with the arrival of Western powers in the late 1830s.
ended the First Opium War (18391842) and took Hong Kong away from China, initiated what is known as
Chinas Century of Humiliation. The periodcoming to an end nearly hundred years later when Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the
Peoples Republic of China on October 1, 1949116was marked by major wars and conflicts between China and the Western powers or Japan: the First and the Second
Opium War of 18391842 and 18561860, the Sino-Japanese Jiawu War of 18941895, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and the War of Resistance against Japan of
1931/19371945.117 Not only causing humiliating military defeats, these events also destroyed Chinas sense of sovereignty and
territorial integrity by forcing on it unilateral concessions that included indemnities, extraterritoriality, and the opening of treaty ports.118
As sudden and long lasting as these traumatic confrontations were, they have left an indelible mark on Chinas historical memory,
fundamentally reshaping its views on international politics. In particular, the Century of Humiliation has primed
the Chinese to view the Western powers, especially the United States, as holding aggressive, interventionist
intentions toward China.119 For example, in 1990, China attacked President George H. W. Bushs call for a new world order as the invisible integrationist
hand of the conspiratorial peaceful evolution strategy that seeks to bring the entire world under hegemonic US rule.120 The Chinese even criticized the
stricter policy review standards WTO imposed on China as an attempt by foreigners, especially the
United States, to create more opportunities to snoop into and intervene in Chinas internal affairs.
Considering that the stricter requirements were completely legitimate given Chinas admission into WTO prior to its full compliance with the terms of membership, the
extent of Chinas bias can be said to have been quite substantial.121 Moreover, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989, Deng Xiaoping said, I am a
Chinese, and I am familiar with the history of aggression against China. When I heard that the seven Western countries, at their summit meeting, had decided to impose
sanctions on China, my immediate association was to 1900 [referring to the Boxer Rebellion], when the allied forces of the eight powers invaded China. 122 Basically, the
historical loss of sovereignty has greatly sensitized China to the behaviors and intentions of the Western
powers (and other parties involved). Against any signs of disrespect toward its sovereignty, China was willing to go
quite far in order to prevent any further acts of disrespecteven as it was pursuing social creativity. The Taiwan Strait
Crisis of 19951996 was an exemplar case in point.
 IL: Xi gets the blame

Xi gets the blame for saying yes

Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations & ** chair and chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chair of the
Center for a New American Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London,
the Asia Group (Robert & Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February
2016, http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
One downside to Xis breathtaking success in consolidating power is that it has left him with near total
responsibility for his governments policy missteps on matters ranging from the stock market slowdown to labor market unrest. His
visibility on these issues and his dominance of the decision-making process have made him a powerful but
potentially exposed leader. With Xis image and political position vulnerable to Chinas economic downturn, his countrys external behavior
may increasingly be guided by his own domestic political imperatives.
impact
Balancing good
 Impact: primacy

US leadership prevents extinction it accesses every impact

Dobriansky, 15 - Paula J. Dobriansky served as under secretary of state for global affairs from 2001 to 2009.
She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs. (We Asked Paula J. Dobriansky: What Should Be the Purpose of
American Power? The National Interest, 8/25, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/we-asked-paula-j-
dobriansky-what-should-be-the-purpose-13678
The purpose of American power, which includes military, economic, diplomatic, ideological, legal and cultural components, is to protect the entire range of our national-security interests. While we face
many pressing domestic challenges, America cannot afford to focus on them alone . Americans cannot be secure and prosperous without a stable, rule-
driven international order. Terrorism, refugee flows, pandemic diseases, pollution, cyberattacks,
economic decay, nuclear proliferation and military aggression can directly threaten our security and prosperity even when
they arise overseas. We cannot handle these threats successfully in an ad hoc fashion. American power must be continuously applied to maintain

political, military and economic international institutions and alliances that, with effective U.S. leadership, can
safeguard global stability, economic growth and the rule of law. This does not mean that every foreign dispute or fight concerns us. But we
must counter fundamental assaults on the existing global liberal order. This task is particularly crucial today, since the postCold War
international framework is under attack by numerous challenges, including Islamic fundamentalism, growing Sunni-Shia strife,
Irans efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and become the preeminent power in the Middle East, Russian revanchism, and Chinas
efforts to exercise dominion over Asia and strong-arm its neighbors. In addition to these hard-power threats, the world faces numerous humanitarian crises,
ranging from famines, environmental devastation and extreme weather events to flows of refugees and displaced persons.

While the United States cannot solve all of these problems, consistent with our moral values, it has been a world leader in rendering humanitarian

assistance and helping to alleviate poverty worldwide. America must always retain the ability, when necessary, to use its power unilaterally. However,
the United States has been most successful when it has worked with international institutions and alliances, partnering
with like-minded countries and combining their resources and capabilities with our own. Furthermore, the best way to deal with potential international

threats is to deter them from arising or at least defeat them before they become acute. This requires
continuous American leadership and credibility, especially in upholding our international
commitments, to reassure our allies and deter our enemies.

Hegemony solves great power war, economic collapse, and proliferation

Brooks and Wohlforth, 16 both professors of government at Dartmouth (Stephen and William, The
Once and Future Superpower Why China Wont Overtake the United States Foreign Affairs, May/June,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower?cid=nlc-
fatoday-
20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1&spMailingID=51424540
&spUserID=MTg3NTEzOTE5Njk2S0&spJobID=922513469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
Given the barriers thwarting Chinas path to superpower status, as well as the low incentives for trying to overcome them, the future of the international system hinges most on whether the United
barring
States continues to bear the much lower burden of sustaining what we and others have called deep engagement, the globe-girdling grand strategy it has followed for some 70 years. And

some odd change of heart that results in a true abnegation of its global role (as opposed to overwrought, politicized charges sometimes made about
its already having done so), Washington will be well positioned for decades to maintain the core military capabilities,

alliances, and commitments that secure key regions, backstop the global economy, and foster cooperation on
transnational problems. The benefits of this grand strategy can be difficult to discern, especially in light of the United States foreign misadventures in recent years. Fiascos such as the
invasion of Iraq stand as stark reminders of the difficulty of using force to alter domestic politics abroad. But power is as much about preventing unfavorable outcomes as it is about causing favorable
aving enough strength to
ones, and here Washington has done a much better job than most Americans appreciate. For a largely satisfied power leading the international system, h

deter or block challengers is in fact more valuable than having the ability to improve ones position further on
the margins. A crucial objective of U.S. grand strategy over the decades has been to prevent a much more dangerous
world from emerging, and its success in this endeavor can be measured largely by the absence of outcomes common to
 regions destabilized by severe security dilemmas, tattered alliances unable to contain breakout
history: important

challengers, rapid weapons proliferation, great-power arms races, and a descent into competitive economic or
military blocs. Were Washington to truly pull back from the world, more of these challenges would emerge, and transnational threats
would likely loom even larger than they do today. Even if such threats did not grow, the task of addressing them would become immeasurably harder if the United States had to grapple with a much less
stable global order at the same time. And as difficult as it sometimes is today for the United States to pull together coalitions to address transnational challenges, it would be even harder to do so if the
country abdicated its leadership role and retreated to tend its garden, as a growing number of analysts and policymakersand a large swath of the publicare now calling for.
 --Hegemony internal link

China Rise threatens US Hegemony

Mearsheimer 14 - R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University
of Chicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully?, National Interest, 10/25,
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204//AK)
The rise of China appears to be changing this situation, however, because this development has the potential
to fundamentally alter the architecture of the international system. If the Chinese economy continues growing at a brisk clip in the next
few decades, the United States will once again face a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will
return in full force. It is still an open question as to whether Chinas economy will continue its spectacular rise or even continue growing at a more modest, but still
impressive, rate. There are intelligent arguments on both sides of this debate, and it is hard to know who is right. But if those who are bullish on China are correct, it will
almost certainly be the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century, for China will be transformed into an enormously powerful country. The
attendant question that will concern every maker of foreign policy and student of international politics is a simple but profound one: can China rise peacefully? The aim of
this chapter is to answer that question. To
predict the future in Asia, one needs a theory of international politics that
explains how rising great powers are likely to act and how the other states in the system will react to them.
We must rely on theory because many aspects of the future are unknown; we have few facts about the future.
Thomas Hobbes put the point well: The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all. Thus, we
must use theories to predict what is likely to transpire in world politics. Offensive realism offers important insights into Chinas rise. My argument in a nutshell is that if
China continues to grow economically, it will attempt to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates
the Western Hemisphere. The United States, however, will go to enormous lengths to prevent China from achieving regional hegemony. Most of Beijings
neighbors, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam, will join with the United States to contain Chinese power. The result will be an intense
security competition with considerable potential for war. In short, Chinas rise is unlikely to be tranquil. It is important to emphasize that my focus is not on how China will
behave in the immediate future, but instead on how it will act in the longer term, when it will be far more powerful than it is today. The fact is that present-day China does
not possess significant military power; its military forces are inferior to those of the United States. Beijing would be making a huge mistake to pick a fight with the U.S.
military nowadays. Contemporary China, in other words, is constrained by the global balance of power, which is clearly stacked in Americas favor. Among other
advantages, the United States has many consequential allies around the world, while China has virtually none. But we are not concerned with that situation here. Instead, the
China controls much more relative
focus is on a future world in which the balance of power has shifted sharply against the United States, where
power than it does today, and where China is in roughly the same economic and military league as the United
States. In essence, we are talking about a world in which China is much less constrained than it is today.

China rise is a definitive threat detrimental to US global hegemony and will create
significant competition for influence in key areas
Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204) //
EDP
a rising China will have strategic interests outside of Asia, just as the United States has important interests
In addition to pursuing regional hegemony,

China will have good reason to interfere in the politics of the

beyond the Western Hemisphere. In keeping with the dictates of offensive realism,

Americas so as to cause Washington trouble in its own backyard, thus making it more difficult for the U.S.
military to move freely around the world. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union formed a close alliance with Cuba in good part for the purpose of interfering in
Americas backyard. In the future, relations between the United States and a country like Brazil will perhaps worsen, creating

an opportunity for China to form close ties with Brazil and maybe even station military forces in the Western
Hemisphere. Additionally, China will have powerful incentives to forge ties with Canada and Mexico and do whatever it can to
weaken Americas dominance in North America. Its aim will not be to threaten the American homeland directly, but rather to distract the United States from

looking abroad and force it to focus increased attention on its own neighborhood. This claim may sound implausible at present, but
remember that the Soviets tried to put nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba in 1962, had more than 40,000 troops in Cuba that same year, and also provided Cuba with a wide variety of sophisticated
the United States already has a huge military presence in Chinas backyard. China
conventional weapons. And do not forget that

will obviously want to limit Americas ability to project power elsewhere, in order to improve Beijings
prospects of achieving regional hegemony in Asia. However, China has other reasons for wanting to pin down the United States as much as possible in the
Western Hemisphere. In particular, China has major economic and political interests in Africa, which seem likely to increase in the future. Even more

important, China is heavily dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf, and that dependence is apt to grow

significantly over time. China, like the United States, is almost certain to treat the Persian Gulf as a vital strategic interest,
which means Beijing and Washington will eventually engage in serious security competition in that region, much
as the two superpowers did during the Cold War. Creating trouble for the United States in the Western Hemisphere will limit its

ability to project power into the Persian Gulf and Africa. To take this line of analysis a step further, most of the oil that China
imports from the Gulf is transported by sea. For all the talk about moving that oil by pipelines and railroads through Myanmar and Pakistan, the fact is that maritime
transport is a much easier and cheaper option. However, for Chinese ships to reach the Gulf as well as Africa from Chinas major ports

along its eastern coast, they have to get from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean, which are separated by various Southeast Asian countries.

The only way for Chinese ships to move between these two large bodies of water is to go through three
major passages. Specifically, they can go through the Strait of Malacca, which is surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, or they can go farther south and traverse either the
Lombok or the Sunda Strait, each of which cuts through Indonesia and leads into the open waters of the Indian Ocean just to the northwest of Australia. Chinese ships then have to traverse the Indian
Chinese leaders will surely want to control
Ocean and the Arabian Sea to reach the Persian Gulf. After that, they have to return to China via the same route.

these sea lines of communication, just as the United States emphasizes the importance of controlling its
primary sea routes. Thus, it is hardly surprising that there is widespread support in China for building a blue-water navy,
which would allow China to project power around the world and control its main sea lines of communication.
In brief, if China continues its rapid economic growth, it will almost certainly become a superpower, which means

it will build the power-projection capability necessary to compete with the United States around the globe. The
two areas to which it is likely to pay the greatest attention are the Western Hemisphere and the Persian Gulf, although Africa will also be of marked importance to Beijing. In addition, China will
undoubtedly try to build military and naval forces that would allow it to reach those distant regions, much the way the United States has pursued sea control.
 --AT: Hegemonic temptation

US economic weakness means it will focus on the core mission of grand strategy and
not peripheral conflicts
Brooks and Wohlforth, 16 both professors of government at Dartmouth (Stephen and William, The
Once and Future Superpower Why China Wont Overtake the United States Foreign Affairs, May/June,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower?cid=nlc-
fatoday-
20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1&spMailingID=51424540
&spUserID=MTg3NTEzOTE5Njk2S0&spJobID=922513469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
Ever since the Soviet Unions demise, the United States dramatic power advantage over other states has been accompanied by the risk of self-inflicted wounds, as occurred
in Iraq. But the
slippage in the United States economic position may have the beneficial effect of forcing U.S. leaders
to focus more on the core mission of the countrys grand strategy rather than being sucked into messy
peripheral conflicts. Indeed, that has been the guiding logic behind President Barack Obamas foreign policy. Nonetheless, a
world of lasting U.S. military preeminence and declining U.S. economic dominance will continue to test the United States capacity for restraint, in four main ways.
 Balancing solves

Balancing is the only choice Chinas rise is inevitable and engagement wont
preserve American primacy loss of hegemony drives dangerous transition wars and
revives interventionism
Tellis, 14Ashley, senior associate @ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, PhD from U
Chicago, former special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest
Asia at the National Security Council. Balancing Without Containment, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace PDF report, Jan 22,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/balancing_without_containment.pdf, p. 14-15 br
The prospect that China might one day become the greatest power in the world, riding to that apex on the back of American
investments in maintaining a liberal international order, should be disturbing to the United States. Whatever else it may imply, the loss

of American hegemony would be dangerous to U.S. security because it would entail a diminution of strategic
autonomy, the first and most important benefit of possessing greater power than others in a competitive environment. Being the most powerful entity in the
global system for over a century has not only increased U.S. safety by allowing the United States to defeat threats far from its shores but also permitted Washington to
shape the international environment in ways that reflect its own interests. This capacity to configure the milieu in which it operates to its advantage in all arenas
economic, military, geopolitical, ideational, and institutionalimplies that Washington can constrain the choices of other states far more than it is constrained by them. This critical measure of relative
The loss of American primacy to China, therefore, would put
power affords the United States greater immunity than its competitors enjoy.37

Washington at Beijings mercy far more than is currently the case. Consequently, as long as the international system remains
rivalrous and harbors threats to U.S. security, the United States has no alternative but to preserve
American hegemony. Such preeminence provides greater security than the alternative of equality with, let alone subordination to, others. It
allows the United States to attract the resources necessary to maintain the most innovative economic system
on the planet, a capacity that permits it to enjoy a high standard of living and produce the formidable military instruments that enable it to impose its will on rival powers. It affords
the United States the luxury of being able to defend itself by conducting military operations closer to the homelands of its adversaries than to its own. It
enables Washington to maintain a robust system of alliances that offers the promise of collective defense against common threats and provides
significant reservoirs of capability for expeditionary operations abroad. It gilds the attractiveness of American ideas, customs, and fashions internationally and thus procures legitimation by means that
And it permits the United States to protect its national equities through various international
go beyond mere force.

institutions that represent a rule-based order and secure favorable outcomes for Washington without it having to repeatedly
apply raw power. The United States would lose many of these benefits were China to rival or replace it as the
most powerful state in the international system. And Chinas ascent to this pinnacle would be doubly painful
because Beijing has benefited disproportionately from an international system that was originally intendedand is still meantto advance American interests in the first instance. Concerns about the
losing U.S. preeminence might matter less if it were certain that Chinese primacy would not
consequences of

fundamentally undermine American interests. Such an expectation, however, is absurd in any competitive
system. For all their affinities, even the rising United States drove deep nails into the coffin of British
hegemony, a reality that London, blinded by its illusions about its special relationship with Washington,
often failed to see during Americas own ascent to power. As Correlli Barnett acidly concluded, For the Americanslike the Russians, like the Germans, like the English themselves in
the eighteenth centurywere motivated by a desire to promote their own interests rather than by sentiment, which was a commodity they reserved for Pilgrims Dinners, where it could do no harm.38
Naturally, American power in turn would be similarly threatened by Chinese ascendency, even if Beijing
currently denies any intention to challenge U.S. preeminence.

A balancing strategy is vital to preventing Chinas hostile rise increasing economic

integration threatens US leadership and risks existential impacts
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
 Integration, the prevailing U.S. approach
The principal task that confronts U.S. grand strategy today, therefore, is adapting to the fundamental challenge posed by Chinas continuing rise.

toward China and the one followed assiduously since the 1970s, has undoubtedly contributed to Chinas rise as a future rival to American power.
None of the alternatives usually discussed in the debates in Washington and elsewhere about how to respond to Chinas growing strength satisfy the objective of preserving American primacy for yet
another long cycle in international politics. These alternatives, which includeembracing and participating with China, accommodating Beijing
through some kind of a Group of Two (G2) arrangement, or containing China la the Soviet Union, all have severe limitations from the viewpoint of U.S. national interests and could in fact

undermine the larger goal of strengthening Washingtons preeminence in the global system.33 Accordingly, the United
States should substantially modify its grand strategy toward Chinaone that at its core would replace the goal of concentrating on integrating Beijing into the international
system with that of consciously balancing its riseas a means of protecting simultaneously the security of the United States and

its allies, the U.S. position at the apex of the global hierarchy, and the strength of the liberal
international order, which is owed ultimately to the robustness of American relative power. There is no better basis for analyzing and formulating
U.S. grand strategy toward China than connecting that strategy directly to U.S. vital national interests
conditions that are strictly necessary to safeguard and enhance Americans survival and well-being in a free and secure nation.34 U.S. vital national interests are as
follows: prevent, deter, and reduce the threat of conventional and unconventional attacks on the continental United States and its extended territorial possessions;

maintain a balance of power in Europe and Asia that promotes peace and stability through a continuing U.S.
leadership role and U.S. alliances; prevent the use and slow the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction, secure nuclear weapons and materials, and prevent proliferation of intermediate and long-range delivery systems for nuclear weapons; and promote the health
of the international economy, energy markets, and the environment. Chinas Challenge to U.S. Vital National Interests Although
Washington seeks a cooperative relationship with Beijing regarding nonproliferation, energy security, and the international economy and environment,
the primary U.S. preoccupation regarding these national interests should be a rising Chinas systematic effort to undermine the second
vital national interest mentionedthat is, to fundamentally alter the balance of power in Asia, diminish the vitality of the U.S.-

Asian alliance system, and ultimately displace the United States as the Asian leader. Success in attaining these objectives would open the door to Chinas
ability to undermine the first and third interests over time. As noted earlier, Beijing seeks to achieve these goals: replace the United States as the primary power in Asia; weaken

the U.S. alliance system in Asia;35 undermine the confidence of Asian nations in U.S. credibility, reliability, and staying power; use Chinas economic
power to pull Asian nations closer to PRC geopolitical policy preferences; increase PRC military capability to strengthen
deterrence against U.S. military intervention in the region; cast doubt on the U.S. economic model; ensure U.S. democratic values do not diminish the CCPs hold
on domestic power; and avoid a major confrontation with the United States in the next decade. President Xi signaled Chinas aims to undermine the Asian balance of power at the Conference on
Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia in early 2014 when he argued that Asias problems ultimately must be resolved by Asians and Asias security ultimately must be protected by
The capacity of the United States to deal successfully with this systematic geoeconomic, military, and
Asians.36

diplomatic challenge by China to U.S. primacy in Asia will determine the shape of the international order for
decades to come.
 AT: Allies wont support balancing

Asia will join the US in counterbalancing China

Smith, 15 - Jeff M. Smith is the Director for Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council
(RIP: America's "Engagement" Strategy towards China? 8/3, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-
americas-china-strategy-should-be-13473?page=show
As the Obama administration considers the merits of new strategies to cope with Chinas rise, it would benefit from focusing on the one silver lining produced by Chinas flirtation with neonationalism.
A key component of any effective U.S. balancing strategy lies in nurturing a balancing coalition of like-
minded regional partners. Once an insurmountable task, mounting regional fears over Chinese aggression have arguably
rendered the Asian landscape more conducive to such an endeavor than ever before. A decade ago, a handful of Asian Middle
Powers with little history of collaboration began flirting with new avenues of defense cooperation. What began as tentative steps broke into an open sprint the last two years, largely driven by anxiety
new relationships have blossomed among Japan, India, Australia, the
over Chinas rise. As each has strengthened its ties with Washington,

Philippines, Vietnam and others. Chinas neighbors, it seems, are reevaluating their own engagement strategies
and concluding that a more overt balancing posture offers the best insurance against Chinese aggression.
While the initial tangible impact may appear modest, the strategic calculus in these capitals is rapidly
changing.

Asia fears China and will bandwagon with the US

Manning and Przystup 16 (Robert* and James**, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He previously
served in the State Department as a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific
(1989-93) and on the Secretarys policy planning staff (2004-08)* Senior Fellow at the National Defense
University Institute for National Security Studies** , What Might a New Asian Order Look Like?,
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/what-might-new-asian-order-look-15754, 4/12/16, NRG)
we are witnessing an evolution of the alliance structure from the Cold War hub
As for the present security architecture in the region,

and spokes model to a more open architecture fostering bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with
U.S. allies and partners as well as between them. Within the partnership construct, the United States, Japan and Australia are
working with countries bordering the South China Sea on initiatives aimed at maritime capacity building,
enhanced maritime domain awareness, joint training, exercising and port calls. Why is this happening? In effect Chinas
assertive nationalist behavior, both military and diplomatic, after the global financial crisis has sparked a bandwagon effect
among Asian states, pushing them toward the United States and each other. Take for example the behavior of then Chinese foreign
minister Yang Jiechi at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi in 2010, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered U.S. assistance to resolve South China Sea disputes. After his walk out in response
to the Secretarys presentation, Yang returned later to remind the Southeast Asian nations that "China is big. Youre small. Thats a fact." There is a growing recognition that when China
pushes against U.S. and Asian interests, the latter will push back. In effect whats been driving the evolution of the regions security architecture is a
combination of Chinas Middle Kingdom efforts to reverse 160 years of humiliation and signals from the region that theyre not necessarily interested in that reversal.
 AT: Balancing bad impact turn

They cant win offense the failure of engagement causes a reversion to containment
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
Containment and Engagement The policy of choice for the great majority of China watchers, the foreign policy establishment at large, and U.S. policymakers for
more than 40 years, containment and engagement draws on a long heritage of essentially liberal ideas about international order. As with confrontation and
enhanced balancing, the objective of containment and engagement is perpetuating American preeminence in the AsiaPacific. It aims to do so, however, by supplementing

politico-military pressure to check Chinese ambitions with an interlocking, mutually beneficial web of
economic, institutional, and cultural links that incentivizes China to cooperate with the global order rather than
challenge it: sticks and carrots. An underlying assumption of this approach is that reliance on overtly hostile measures to ensure Chinese compliance with international norms will only confirm the
mainland's worst assumptions of U.S. intentions and turn it into an enemy with a revisionist agenda. Aside from being provocative, most containers and engagers deem such measures unnecessary.
China does not pose a threat to America's vital security interests today, tomorrow or at any time in the near future, Robert Ross concludes in a typical assessment. In stark contrast to confrontationists
and enhanced balancers, these observers draw attention to a myriad of deep-seated economic and demographic problems in China that they see as constraining its development and likely to divert
resources needed for an assertive foreign policy, problems that afford some latitude for modulated containment and the pursuit of initiatives aimed at muting the more corrosive elements of the Sino-
American rivalry. A defensive, risk-averse foreign policy would seem to be a logical course for a country consumed with implementing much-needed economic reform, meeting the growing demands of
a restless populace, and hemmed in on all sides by vigilant regional actors wary of its expanding influence. In fact, this is exactly how containers and engagers interpret Chinese grand strategy in the
postCold War era. China's overriding priority is to sustain the remarkable economic growth of the past 30 years, which its leaders regard as key to maintaining political and social stability among a
populace that can no longer be swayed by appeals to ideology. A stable international environment is conducive to this focus. While Beijing chafes at America's military presence in the region, particularly
its informal commitment to the defense of Taiwan, and longs for a transition to a multipolar world where U.S. power is constrained, it recognizes both the need for avoiding confrontation and
advancing its economic and security interests through constructive relations with Washington. While cautioning against overreacting to a threat that has been exaggerated in some quarters, containers
and engagers do not take a cooperative, peaceful China for granted. According to their logic, the Chinese government's acute sense of aggrievement over historical episodes of international humiliation
and its responsiveness to a pugnacious streak of nationalism among its people is worrisome, as are its uncertain long-term intentions, at best shaky commitment to the liberal global order, and rapid
military modernization. As a hedge against China's rise veering off in an antagonistic direction, they call for preserving the U.S.-led hub-and-spokes alliance system in Asia. To Beijing's great irritation,
this policy also entails maintaining the flow of arms to Taiwan to uphold the credibility of America's security commitments throughout the region, as well as holding the Chinese government's feet to
the fire for human rights violations and pressing it to make itself more accountable to the population, the long-held assumption being that a more democratic China will be less prone to aggression. The
great appeal of containment and engagement for U.S. decision makers is that, more than any other choice of strategy toward China, it preserves the greatest number of options and has hitherto proven
sufficiently flexible to accommodate evolving conditions in the Sino-American relationship. Most importantly, this blend of deterrence and conciliation has largely succeeded in keeping a lid on tensions
between China and its neighbors in a region rife with flashpoints and has made some progress in integrating the PRC into the existing international order. It seems well suited for today's challenging
strategic environment, in which the United States is buffeted by resource constraints, extensive global commitments, and anti-interventionist popular sentiment as it looks to preserve its leadership role
in Asia by means short of confrontation. Yet over the coming years, this longstanding policy, which has worked well while China has remained
relatively weak and preoccupied with internal development, will be subjected to unprecedented strains. Whether it seeks to translate its growing power
into increased regional clout or attempts to outwardly deflect domestic discontent through aggressive posturing, acting out of strength or weakness, the PRC is likely to present

new security challenges that will test the support of voters and policy elites alike for engagement. If
moderate efforts to encourage China's further adjustment to U.S. preferences in the realms of security, trade, and global governance
are seen as falling short or, even worse, displaying timidity in the face of Chinese assertiveness, a stronger
emphasis on containment will surely result.

Engagement is on-balance more risky it better explains status quo aggression and
will cause a major war down the road
Jacobs, 15 - Bruce Jacobs is emeritus professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University (Bruce,
Appeasement will only encourage China, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/1,
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/appeasement-will-only-encourage-expansionist-china-20151101-
gknz2l.html)//JS
History
The arguments of people such as Age columnist Hugh White are dangerous. They ignore the cause of tension in Asia and say we have to be careful about becoming involved in a war.

has taught us that "appeasement" of such expansionist powers as China does not stop war. Rather, it only
temporarily postpones armed conflict and ultimately leads to a much larger war later. Appeasement of
China only enhances Chinese perceptions that the US is a toothless paper tiger. It creates a sense among
China's generals and political leaders that they can pursue expansionist policies without international protest.
The pretence that Taiwan's vote for its own president and legislature can lead to war is false. Both main candidates, Tsai Ing-wen and Eric Chu, want to maintain the status quo that Taiwan is de facto
an independent state but that it will not announce this. Australians would be appalled if we were told by a foreign power that voting for either Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten would lead to war and
that we should vote accordingly. We must be clear that China is the only country threatening anyone else in Asia. The close talks between leaders of such
Asia's democratic countries have become aware of the risks. In classical balance-of-
countries as the US, Japan, India and Australia demonstrate that
 China's expansionist actions have already created a
power theory, the rise of one expansionist power creates a coalition among other powers.

substantial democratic coalition in Asia prepared to prevent China from starting a major war.

But this is still unique offense for us - delaying a transition to balancing increases the
risk of major war
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 262-263)
Regardless of how wide the gap between their military capabilities is at present, the combination of Chinese momentum and American restraint cannot help but accelerate the pace at which the divide
unilateral restraint could turn
narrows. If the optimists are wrong, and the balance is already dose or, regardless of the objective reality, if China's leaders believe it to be, then

out to be a very dangerous policy indeed. While most advocates of enhanced engagement pay lip service to the
importance of preserving a favorable military balance, their reading of the current situation, combined with their strong desire to avoid
antagonizing Beijing, inclines them toward inaction rather than action. When the time comes to make decisions, they are likely to be wary of
deploying additional forces to the Western Pacific, developing new weapons specifically designed for a possible conflict with China, going "too far" in tightening defense ties with U.S. friends and allies,
or creating new multilateral mechanisms to enhance strategic cooperation among Asia's democracies. If their arguments carry the day, the shift in the regional balance of military power toward China
Because of the long lead times involved in designing, building, and deploying new
will accelerate. There are several dangers here.

capabilities, it is hard to quickly reverse unfavorable trends in the balance of military power. If today's leaders
fail to make sound decisions when conditions are reasonably tranquil, their successors may find it very
difficult to respond in a timely fashion in the future if the Sino-American relationship unravels or if
China becomes unstable and unexpectedly aggressive. An unduly muted reaction to China's ongoing buildup
could also increase the risk of misperception, miscalculation, and unintended conflict. Washington's seeming passivity could be taken, not as
a sign of self-confidence, but as an indication of a waning commitment to some or all of its longtime friends and allies in Asia. Depending on how they assess the military balance, planners in the
People's Liberation Army may already be more optimistic about their capabilities than outsiders realize. Even if they are not, absent a vigorous American response, their sense of assurance can only
grow with time. In some future showdown with a third party, Beijing might assume that Washington was disinterested, deterred, or both, only to find out too late that it was neither. The fact that the
U.S. government has a history of not always being dear, even in its own collective mind, about how it would respond until confronted by aggression makes this an even more plausible, and worrisome,
scenario.l7 As it works to reassure Beijing by not overreacting to its initiatives, the United States may also succeed, albeit inadvertently, in demoralizing its own friends. There are already signs of anxiety
emanating from some Asian capitals about America's willingness and ability in the long run to maintain its position of regional military preponderance. What seems like a prudent, measured response
Overreaction doubtless has its dangers, but
could appear from the other side of the Pacific as an indication of resignation and the start of a slow retreat.

underreaction could wind up triggering a cascade of appeasement that will hasten the very outcome
that American strategists are now trying to prevent.

And, China perceives the plan as just as hostile as containment which makes
confrontation inevitable
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
There were strong overtones of an integrationist strategy toward China during the early phases of Barack Obama's presidency. Hobbled by soaring budget deficits and a
slow recovery from a crippling financial crisis, preoccupied with bringing America's external commitments into closer alignment with its finite resources after a decade of
military entanglement in the Middle East, and pessimistic about the constraints on U.S. power, the
administration was intrigued by the idea of
recruiting Chinese cooperation in addressing a host of transnational challenges, such as recovery from the global
financial crisis, climate change, and reining in North Korea's nuclear weapons program. To incentivize such assistance, Washington made a
concerted attempt to recognize Beijing's increased international stature and accord it with more influence in global deliberations; the G-20 was formally upgraded as the
premier forum for guiding the world economy, and the bilateral Strategic Economic Dialogue initiated by the preceding Bush administration was expanded to a Strategic
and Economic Dialogue to foster interaction between the two countries across a wider spectrum of issues. Yet Obama officials also viewed
efforts to
encourage China to assume additional burdens in global governance as extending U.S. hegemony by
increasing the PRC's stake in upholding the American-led liberal order, thereby ensuring that its rise occurred within the confines of
U.S.-inspired norms. Beijing suspected as much, thinking the Obama administration's call for it to make a greater
contribution to the management of global order was an ill-concealed scheme to contain China's rise by
burdening it with additional responsibilities that would divert resources from economic development at home. If
pursued with the tenacity recommended by its advocates, integration, in its universalistic assumption that what's good for the United States is good for others,
could prove as provocative to China as any other strategy. Though craving the respect typically enjoyed by a great power, many
Chinese commentators are deeply skeptical of Western calls for it to assume the responsibilities of one,
thinking it a devious ploy to tie down China. While unlikely or unable to overturn the liberal international system, it is entirely conceivable that
China, with deeply embedded ideas of how to manage domestic and international order that sharply diverge from the West's, could pursue a separate path to security and
prosperity. Alternatively, the PRC might eventually reassess its present policy of economic engagement with the Western order if its stratospheric growth rates, the primary
means by which the government appeals for support from its people, are no longer sustained.

Containment is not confrontation the US would only fight China in response to an

attack
Lumbers 15-Program Director, Emerging Security NATO Association of Canada (Michael, Wither the
Pivot? Alternative U.S. Strategies for Responding to Chinas Rise, 10 Jul 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol.34,
Is 4)//SL
Of the six schools of thought discussed here, confrontation is the least likely strategy that U.S. policymakers would ever consider
adopting toward China. The longer a set policy has been pursued and the more institutionally ingrained it is, as is the case with the bipartisan China policy of containment and engagement of the last five
decades, the greater is the need for a jarring event to discredit prevailing orthodoxy and yield a sharp departure in worldview. Dramatic shifts in U.S. national security policy have traditionally occurred in
response to surprise attacksthe British occupation of Washington in August 1814, the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacksthat convinced leaders
The contemplation of preventive war against China, a fully developed nuclear power with
of the need for an expanded world role to safeguard the homeland.

would require an unlikely shock to the system, such as an

the capacity for delivering a catastrophic response to an American attack,

unprovoked Chinese assault on U.S. troops stationed in Asia or on American soil. Short of such a shock, it is
exceedingly difficult to envision such a radical departure in strategy garnering support at home or among
regional allies. Generally, recent public opinion surveys have revealed that while Americans are uneasy about China's rise, they are roughly divided when asked whether the United States
should adopt a tougher economic posture toward China, while strong majorities are opposed to a military confrontation. When asked whether the U.S. should engage with China or work to limit its rise,
roughly two-thirds have consistently opted for the former approach. The marked decline in enthusiasm for U.S. activism abroad after a decade of entanglement in the Middle East and in the wake of a
popular support for a strategy of
financial crisis has surely only cemented this sentiment. Circumstances, of course, could change. For the foreseeable future, however,

confrontation would only result from a direct, unprecedented Chinese threat to U.S. security. Support from America's Asian
allies, whose cooperation in any military or economic showdown against China would be vital to its success, is even less likely. Confrontationists take it for granted that the PRC's neighbors would have
an inherent self-interest in tying down the local bully, but the reality is much different. Anxiety over Beijing's recent saber rattling in the East and South China Seas and over its long-term intentions has
stirred widespread endorsement of a reassertion of American influence in the region. Balanced against this demand for U.S. power, however, is an understanding among these states that their future
prosperity is inextricably linked to continued trade with an economically vigorous China, as well as an unspoken fear that a sustained American presence in the region cannot be guaranteed, rendering
any choice to make an enemy out of the mainland foolhardy. These pressing economic and strategic considerations mandate a tight-rope course that maintains good relations with both Washington and
Beijing. Any potential return for the U.S. of temporarily setting back China's ascent would likely be overwhelmed by the diplomatic isolation that such a provocative act would exact.
 --AT: Balancing bad moderates turn

The threat of containment induces moderation in Chinese foreign policy

Christensen, 15 William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the
China and the World Program at Princeton (Thomas, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising
Power, p. 226-227)
Although the United States should not feed Chinese fears about U.S. hostility,Chinese anxiety about a U.S. containment effort could carry some benefits
for the United States: the potential for future encirclement may encourage Chinese strategists to be more
accommodating. Under conditions in which Chinese analysts believe in the possibility of containment, even
the most pessimistic realpolitik thinkers might join their more optimistic colleagues in prescribing moderate
policies. Chinese strategists sometimes recognize that more coercive Chinese policies toward neighbors
increase both the willingness and the ability of Washington to encircle and constrain China. Just as many American experts
understand that any attempt by the United States to contain China's rise now would likely weaken the United States, many Chinese observers think bullying by

Beijing will create a tighter and more expansive set of U.S.-led security relationships in the region. A fine example of this
phenomenon is provided by Professor Yan Xuetong of Tsinghua University, a highly intelligent and prolific Chinese commentator who, like Mearsheimer, tends to view U.S.-China relations as a zero-
sum struggle. But rather than calling for a more hostile Chinese stance, Yan actually recommends that Beijing behave in an accommodating and reassuring fashion toward its neighbors so as to reduce
the ability of the United States to encircle and strangle China and to prevent regional spirals of tension, thus allowing China to play its full role in global governance. Ironically, he calls for those policies
precisely because he sees an intense struggle for relative power between a rising China and a declining United States. In a provocative New York Times editorial entitled "How China Can Defeat
America," Yan writes, "China's quest to enhance its world leadership status and America's effort to maintain its present position is a zero-sum game. It is the battle for people's hearts and minds that will
determine who eventually prevails. And, as China's ancient philosophers predicted, the country that displays more humane authority will win."2 When Yan's op-ed was first published, a very moderate
Chinese colleague asked me what I thought. My reaction was mixed. There are indeed competitive elements in U.S.-China relations, but I fully reject Van's argument that they create an overall
By cooperating with its neighbors and contributing to global
relationship that is a zero-sum game. Nevertheless, I welcome Van's prescriptions.

governance, China will indeed be increasing its power and prestige, but in ways that serve rather than challenge U.S.
national interests. After all, the real security question posed by China's rise in Asia is not how to keep China down but how to maintain regional stability and guarantee the security and
interests of China's neighbors.
Nationalism
 Impact nationalism turns case

A nationalist backlash will wreck any strategy of accommodation

Glaser, 15 - Charles L Glaser is a professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs and the Department
of Political Science at George Washington University. He is also a fellow in the Kissinger Institute at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? International Security,
Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 4990, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00199
A third feature of Chinas policy that is cause for concern is that growing nationalism or weak civil-military relations, or both, may be
contributing to greater Chinese assertiveness vis--vis its maritime disputes and could contribute to expansion of Chinas future goals.57 One
interpretation suggests that China is less dangerous than if it were not plagued by these problems, because it is reassuring that Chinas leaders do not prefer more assertive
policies, and only sometimes feel compelled to pursue them to avoid negative nationalist reactions. An alternative interpretation is more compelling and far less reassuring
if nationalist pressures from Chinese elites and the broader public are pushing Chinas leaders to act more
assertively or preventing them from stepping back once crises occur, China could be driven to adopt more
assertive policies than those preferred by its leaders. Consequently, it is worrisome that careful observers frequently
note the role of nationalist pressures in influencing Chinas policies. For example, Taylor Fravel and Michael Swaine argue that Chinas
willingness to use force to resolve territorial disputes in the East China Sea could have increased because acute nationalist sensitivities toward Japan exist among the
Chinese public. Iain Johnston explains that the
Chinese ministry of foreign affairs could not state publicly that reports that
China had declared the South China Sea a core interest were wrong, because this might have raised the ire of
nationalists within the population and the elite.58 If unchecked, nationalism has the potential to lead China to
adopt nonsecurity goalsfor example, the status that could be envisioned accompanying the acquisition of
the economic and military power needed to be a superpowerthat could require pushing the United States out
of East Asia.59 Chinese nationalism, however, does not appear to have begun to approach this level of
influence.60 Accommodation would be more dangerous if the United States eventually faces this type of China,
although the much greater peril would be the full incompatibility of the two states regional goals.
 Nationalism turns human rights

Nationalist Beijing turns human rights-government crackdown on liberal efforts

Blackwill & Campbell 16-*Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. Foreign policy & ** chairman and
chief executive officer of the Asia Group, LLC. also serves as chairman of the Center for a New American
Security, is a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and is on the board of directors for Standard Chartered PLC in London, the Asia Group(Robert &
Kurt,"Xi Jinping on the Global Stage," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2016,
http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/CSR74_Blackwill_Campbell_Xi_Jinping.pdf)//SL
Finally, Xis
resistance to Western culture and values may intensify. Xi has arrested countless dissidents, civil
society leaders, and activists; sharply curtailed the ability of NGOs to operate; intensified controls over the media and the
Internet; and inveighed against Western cultural contamination while extolling Confucianism. Because Chinas economy is now slowing, Xis
fear of political instability may push him to adopt even sterner measures, and new violations of human rights and
the emerging challenges that Western NGOs and businesses face will likely cause renewed friction in Chinas relationships with the West.
Answers to other turns
 AT: Chinese democracy

A democratic transition increases external aggression nationalists will benefit from

democracy
Friedberg 11 - Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of the
Woodrow Wilson Schools Center for International Security Studies (Aaron, A Contest for Supremacy: China,
America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, p. 249-250)
Not everyone is convinced of this optimistic forecast. Some self-styled "realists" assert that the interests and objectives of a democratic China will not be much different from those of today's
authoritarian state. In this view, domestic reforms may make China richer, stronger, more stable, and hence a more potent competitor, without deflecting it from its desires to dominate East Asia and
settle scores with some of its neighbors.10Even if, in the long run, China becomes a stable, peaceful democracy, its passage
could prove rocky. The opening of the nation's political system to dissent and debate is likely to introduce an
element of instability into its foreign policy as new voices are heard and aspiring leaders vie for popular support. As one observer ruefully points out, "An
authoritarian China has been highly predictable. A more open and democratic China could produce new uncertainties about both domestic policy and international relations."11 Nationalism,

perhaps in its most virulent and aggressive form, is one factor likely to play a prominent role in shaping the

foreign policy of a democratizing China. Thanks to the spread of the Internet, and the relaxation of restraints on at least some forms of "patriotic" political expression,
the current regime already finds itself subject to public criticism whenever it takes what some regard as an overly accommodating stance toward Japan, Taiwan, or the United States. Beijing has sought at
the regime has also gone to great lengths to keep
times to stir up patriotic sentiment, but fearful that anger at foreigners could all too easily be turned against it,

popular passions in check. A democratically elected government might be far less inhibited. American-based political scientist
Fei-Ling Wang argues that a post-Communist regime would actually be more forceful in asserting its sovereignty over

Taiwan, Tibet, and the South China Sea. As he explains, "A 'democratic' regime in Beijing, free from the debilitating
concerns for its own survival but likely driven by popular emotions, could make the rising Chinese power a
much more assertive, impatient, belligerent, even aggressive force, at least during the unstable period of fast ascendance to the ranks of a world-
class power."12 The last proviso is key. Even those who are most confident of the longterm pacifying effects of democratization recognize the possibility of a turbulent transition. In his book China's
democratic revolutions in other countries have often led to bursts of external
Democratic Future, Bruce Gilley acknowledges that

aggression, and he notes that since the start of the twentieth century, pro-democracy movements in China have also been highly
nationalistic. Despite these precedents, Gilley predicts that after an interval of perhaps a decade, a transformed nation will settle into more stable and cooperative relationships with the United
States as well as its democratic neighbors.13
Yes China hostile rise
 --xt: territory

Current territorial expansion demonstrates hostile rise

Revere 16- Senior director with the Albright Stonebridge Group, Served as Acting Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary, Graduated Princeton University (Evans, U.S. policy and East Asian security:
Challenge and response, Brookings Institute,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2016/01/25-policy-and-east-asian-
security-revere//AK)
major reduction in the size of the PLA underscores Chinas determination to improve its ability to
The planned

engage in modern warfare. By streamlining regional military commands, shifting the center of gravity of the
military from ground forces to higher-tech air and naval capabilities, by emphasizing joint command
structures, and by moving the savings gained by demobilizing ground troops into improving combat
technology and systems, China is building a military based on the U.S. model -- a model that has shown considerable
success in power projection and conducting offensive military operations. Chinas attention to a more modernized military reflects in part a
legitimate desire to defend its territory, sovereignty, and interests. As China has become an increasingly prominent actor on the world stage, the range of these interests has naturally expanded, requiring
Chinas approach to its interests includes a vigorous assertion of territorial claims that has put
corresponding attention to the means to defend them. But

the PRC at odds with many of its neighbors, including U.S. allies like Japan and the Philippines, and also contributed to an escalation of
tensions in the region. Chinas claims in the South China Sea raise particular concerns. Some of these claims contravene or exceed what is permitted under the U.N. Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). And because China often uses military and paramilitary assets to enforce or assert its claims,

they pose a potential threat to freedom of navigation and access in these strategically important waters.[v]
Meanwhile, Chinas use of its naval, air, and Coast Guard assets around the disputed Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu by the Chinese) has heightened Japanese concerns about Chinas intentions. In a
new development, the PRC has begun to send armed warships into the waters near the Japanese-controlled islands,
increasing tensions and creating the possibility of a miscalculation or accidental confrontation.[vi] While experts frequently
argue whether Chinas military growth and modernization will ever pose a serious threat to the United States, whose military capabilities are hardly declining, Chinas actual use of

military assets in dealing with several of its neighbors shows that Beijings threat is hardly a theoretical one.
This challenge is made all the greater by Chinas ongoing land reclamation and island-building in the South China Sea and the

militarization of newly created land -- steps that will inevitably give China new power projection capabilities in
these sensitive waters.

China abandoned the peaceful rise strategy its actions are far more aggressive and
threatening to regional states
Glaser, 15 - Charles L Glaser is a professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs and the Department
of Political Science at George Washington University. He is also a fellow in the Kissinger Institute at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? International Security,
Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 4990, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00199
Chinas policies in the South China and East China Seas started generating growing concern that
Around the same time,

Chinas goals are more extensive than previously believed and that Beijing places greater value on achieving them. Careful analysis through 2011 finds that many of these fears
were exaggerated: although China was acting more assertively, it had not expanded its maritime claims; and much of Chinas policy was in reaction to more assertive policies adopted by other claimants.
Less reassuring,Chinas behavior did reflect its growing military capabilities and its leaders sensitivity to nationalist
pressures.46 Chinas more recent policies provide grounds for greater concern. Reacting to the purchase of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
by the Japanese government in 2012, China launched a series of persistent and increasingly risky operations against the islands,

which are under Japanese administrative control. Perhaps more significant, China appears to have redefined the nature of its interests in the

Diaoyu Islands, stating for the first time that they are among its core interests.47 Chinas establishment of an air
defense identification zone over part of the East China Sea in 2013 has further fueled tensions.48 Chinas
policy has also arguably become more assertive in the South China Sea. For example, in 2012 China used patrol ships to
prevail over the Philippines in a dispute over the Scarborough Shoal.49 More recently, a serious crisis ensued when a
Chinese-controlled oil company installed a large oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam.50 Although none of these territorial claims
is new, Chinas changing definition of its interests and its more assertive behavior are causes for concern. First, if Chinas changing policies simply reflect its

increased military capabilities, then its actions are a reminder of the obviousas its improved military capabilities
increase the probability of success or reduce the costs of conflict, or both, China will become more willing to
use, and threaten to use, force in pursuit its goals.51 Second, and probably more worrisome, Chinas actions could reflect an increase in the value that its
leadership places on achieving its goals. The shift in Chinas framing of the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute implies a reduced

willingness to compromise on this issue. Although this could simply reflect the reduced risks of fighting, it could also result from an increase in the value that China places on
prevailing. China appears to have largely abandoned its peaceful rise strategy, which was intended to avoid scaring

neighboring countries and, in turn, to avoid generating military buildups and the formation and deepening of opposing alliances.52 Chinas recent actions
suggest that it now places lower priority on avoiding provoking other states.

Chinese rise inevitably leads to aggression theyll mimic US hegemony patterns via
control of surrounding areas and will push the US out of Asia, decreasing its ability
to deter conflict
Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204) //
EDP
If China continues its striking economic growth over the next few decades, it is likely to act in accordance
with the logic of offensive realism, which is to say it will attempt to imitate the United States. Specifically, it will try to dominate Asia the way
the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. It will do so primarily because such domination offers the best way to survive under international
anarchy. In addition, China is involved in various territorial disputes and the more powerful it is, the better able it will

be to settle those disputes on terms favorable to Beijing. Furthermore, like the United States, a powerful China is
sure to have security interests around the globe, which will prompt it to develop the capability to project
military power into regions far beyond Asia. The Persian Gulf will rank high on the new superpowers list of strategically important areas, but so will the Western
Hemisphere. Indeed, China will have a vested interest in creating security problems for the United States in the

Western Hemisphere, so as to limit the American militarys freedom to roam into other regions, especially
Asia. Let us consider these matters in greater detail. Chinese Realpolitik If my theory is correct, China will seek to maximize the power gap with its
neighbors, especially larger countries like India, Japan, and Russia. China will want to make sure it is so powerful that no state in

Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries. One
major difference between China and the United States is that America started out as a rather small and weak country located along the Atlantic coastline that had to expand westward in order to become
a large and powerful state that could dominate the Western Hemisphere. For the United States, conquest and expansion were necessary to establish regional hegemony. China, in contrast, is already a
huge country and does not need to conquer more territory to establish itself as a regional hegemon on a par with the United States. Of course, it is always possible in particular circumstances that
China will seek to grow its
Chinese leaders will conclude that it is imperative to attack another country to achieve regional hegemony. It is more likely, however, that

economy and become so powerful that it can dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring
countries, and make it clear they will pay a substantial price if they do not follow the rules. After all, this is what
the United States has done in the Western Hemisphere. For example, in 1962, the Kennedy administration let both Cuba and the Soviet Union know that
it would not tolerate nuclear weapons in Cuba. And in 1970, the Nixon administration told those same two countries that building a Soviet naval facility at Cienfuegos was unacceptable. Furthermore,
Washington has intervened in the domestic politics of numerous Latin American countries either to prevent the rise of leaders who were perceived to be anti-American or to overthrow them if they had
A much more powerful China can also be expected to
gained power. In short, the United States has wielded a heavy hand in the Western Hemisphere.

try to push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region, much as the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western
Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. We should expect China to devise its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, as imperial Japan did in the 1930s. In fact, we are already seeing inklings of that policy.
Chinese leaders have made it clear they do not think the United States has a right to interfere in
For example,

disputes over the maritime boundaries of the South China Sea, a strategically important body of water that Beijing effectively claims as its own.
 .
China also objected in July 2010 when the United States planned to conduct naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, which is located between China and the Korean Peninsula In particular, the U.S. Navy
planned to send the aircraft carrier USS George Washington into the Yellow Sea. Those maneuvers were not directed at China; they were aimed instead at North Korea, which was believed to have
sunk a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, in the Yellow Sea. However, vigorous protests from China forced the Obama administration to
move the exercises out of the Yellow Sea and farther east into the Sea of Japan. Sounding a lot like President Monroe, a
Chinese spokesperson succinctly summed up Beijings thinking: We firmly oppose foreign military vessels or
planes entering the Yellow Sea and other waters adjacent to China to engage in activities that would impact
on its security and interests. More generally, there is considerable evidence that Chinese leaders would like to develop the capability to push the U.S. Navy beyond the first
island chain, which is usually taken to include the Greater Sunda Islands, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan. If this were to happen, China would be able to seal off the

East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Yellow Sea, and it would be almost impossible for the U.S.
Navy to reach Korea in the event of war. There is even talk in China about eventually pushing the U.S. Navy beyond the second island chain, which runs from the
eastern coast of Japan to Guam and then down to the Moluccan Islands. It would also include the small island groups like the Bonin, Caroline, and Marianas Islands. If the Chinese were

successful, Japan and the Philippines would be cut off from American naval support.
 --xt official doctrine

Military displays, maritime threats, internal elite debates, and threats against the US
demonstrate hostile rise
Friedberg 15-Professor of Politics and International affairs at Princeton University (Aaron L., The
Sources of Chinese Conduct: Explaining Beijings Assertiveness, Washington Quaterly, Vol. 37, No. 4,
Winter 2015, https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/27433/uploads)//SL
an increasing number of foreign observers (and many Chinese as well) began to note a shift towards
Starting in 2009,

more forceful or assertive behavior on the part of Beijing.1 Among the most frequently cited indications of this trend were:
An internal debate among Chinese elites in which some participants advocated edging away from Deng Xiaopings
hiding and biding strategy and replacing it with something bolder and more self-confident;2 A newly forceful,

triumphalist, or brash tone in foreign policy pronouncements,3 including the more open acknowledgementand even celebrationof Chinas increasing power and influence;
Stronger reactions, including the threatened use of sanctions and financial leverage, to recurrent irritations in
U.S.China relations such as arms sales to Taiwan and presidential visits with the Dalai Lama; More open and frequent displays of Chinas growing
military capabilities including larger, long-range air and naval exercises, and demonstrating or deploying new weapons systems; A markedly increased willingness to use threats
and displays of force on issues relating to the control of the waters, air space, surface features, and resources
off Chinas coasts. These include ongoing disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam (among others) in the South China Sea, with Japan in the East China Sea, and with the United States regarding its conduct of
surveillance and military exercises in areas from the Yellow Sea to the vicinity of Hainan Island.

Speeches, actions, and doctrines prove assertive behavior is inevitable

Mastro 15-an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown University, Why Chinese Assertiveness is Here to Stay, The Washington Quarterly, 21 Jan
2015, https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/27434/uploads)//SL
Chinese assertive behavior is here to stay because it is the manifestation of a deliberate long-term strategy. Many
scholars are more comfortable arguing that a rogue military, a need to cater to Chinese nationalism, or individual leadership traits explain Chinese assertiveness because those explanations suggest
the speeches of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, and
Chinas dangerous and provocative behavior is a temporary paroxysm.35 But

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi highlight the belief that unfriendly, and even hostile, powers are besieging China, especially in the
maritime sphere. Wang Yi has emphasized that China periodically exercises restraint, but must stand its ground when provoked in territorial disputes.36 In a May 2013 speech in Germany, Li Keqiang
suggested that Chinese assertiveness is even in defense of the post-World War II international system. Though a tenuous connection, Li basically insinuates that Chinas active pursuit of its East China
Xi himself has publicly stressed the critical
Sea claims supports the world order laid out in the Potsdam Declaration of 1945.37 And in recent months,

importance of a strong military to a successful foreign policy and dismissed the option of passivity.38 Remaining firm is
the preferred official Chinese approach. Xi Jinping has also emphasized the importance of prioritizing the economic interests of

countries that support Chinese core interests, even if it comes at a relative cost economically.39 Past economic goals solely prioritized making money, with little
consideration to strategic factorsbut today, Chinese leaders are starting to think about how they can use the immense economic benefit of doing business with China in order to gain political
influence. The political priority seems to be defending maritime sovereignty above all else. Historically, upholding maritime sovereignty has been critical to a nations success, and therefore China should
follow a similar trajectory of building a powerful navy that can protect its commercial interests.40 Researchers at Peking University pulled together extensive statistics to demonstrate how important
maritime territory is for Chinese economic, and therefore national, interests. They argue that China must utilize available resources to defend vital sea lanes, which include military, diplomatic, and
economic wherewithal.41 Meanwhile, Chinas top leadership stresses that in spite of Chinas assertiveness in maritime disputes, other countries need not worry about Chinas rise because it does not
seek hegemony or promote imperialism. An anonymous analysis published in the Hong Kong Economic Times of Xi Jinpings November speech concludes that his foreign policy approach is tough
China is unlikely to shift strategies away from relying on coercion and
and unyielding, though not unnecessarily aggressive.42

manipulating risk to achieve its territorial objectives not only because the top leadership publicly promotes
them, but also because they correspond well with Chinas overarching strategy of active defense (jiji fangyu). Active
defense is the operational component of Jiang Zemins National Military Strategic Guidelines for the New Period (xin shiqi guojia junshi zhanlue fangzhen), which serves as the
highest level of strategic guidance for all PLA military operations during war and preparation for war during peacetime.43 Specifically,
the guidelines necessitate developing capabilities to deter, deny, disrupt, and delay the deployment of U.S.
forces into the Chinese theaterhence the Western nomenclature A2/AD. These can be leveraged to accomplish Chinese goals in its maritime disputes
through four distinct but interrelated pathways: 1. geographic: increasing the distance and time required for U.S. forces to arrive in theater from areas of safety before China achieves its political
objectives; 2. kinetic: degrading the U.S. militarys ability to penetrate anti-access environments with an enhanced conventional precision strike system, consisting mainly of cruise and ballistic missiles as
well as attacks on key enabling capabilities such as space-based networks that enable C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) missions;
 exploiting perceived weaknesses in political support and resolve of U.S. allies and friends
3. political: , thereby
keeping the United States out because countries will not allow it to base there; and 4. deterrent: making involvement so costly that the United States opts out of responding, or responds minimally, in a
given contingency.44 Assertiveness is therefore, in many ways, the logical extension of this Chinese strategy as it grows more
confident in the capabilities it has been developing over the last twenty years as part of this active defense strategy. While the
strategic objective is the same for each of the pillars, the theory of victory of the first two pillars is significantly different from that of the latter two. Kinetic and geographic

aspects rely largely on brute force in that China could theoretically accomplish its goals by force alone, without any
collaboration from the United States.45 Take this hypothetical exampleif in the early stages of a conflict, China attacks U.S. bases in Japan, cratering runaways and burying aircraft, no amount of U.S.
resolve will make those planes fly. In this case, the United States may want to support a Taiwan contingency but be unable to do so.
 --xt CMR

Low civilian control makes a peaceful rise impossible

Scobell, 9 Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the China Certificate Program in the
George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University (Andrew, Is There
a Civil-Military Gap in Chinas Peaceful Rise? Parameters, Summer,
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/09summer/scobell.pdf
The reins of civilian control over the PLA
The actions suggest a lack of civilian control, although after the fact they have been explained as acts of deterrence.

seem to be quite loose. At the very least there is poor communication and coordination with key civilian entities,
including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The result appears to be a roguish PLA that makes crisis
management all the more difficult and heightens the potential for worrisome misunderstandings and
misperceptions. While these explanations may help one to make sense of the words and deeds of the Chinese military, they do not provide much relief or reassurance. First, the risk of miscalculation
between the United States and China may be higher than many assume. It is dangerous for American policymakers and analysts to consider US resolve in isolation. This strategy presumes that Chinas
perception of the strength of US resolve in and of itself will be enough to deter Beijing from military action.50 The logic is flawed. For China, US resolve on the question of Taiwan is viewed as limited,
especially in comparison to other issues, and smaller than Chinas own unshakeable resolve. For Chinese analysts, accurately assessing US resolve is tricky. While Beijing can have a high degree of
once a crisis or confrontation develops, the potential for unintended
confidence in its own degree of resolve, it is much harder to judge Washingtons. Second,

escalation is significant. The militaries of the United States and China continue to think about and plan for a possible conflict over Taiwan. This does not mean that a war is
inevitable, but it does mean that in a crisis, escalation might be rapid and difficult to control.51 At least there is improved communication between the two militaries; a hotline linking the Pentagon with
civil-military relations present an ongoing challenge to Chinas political
the Central Military Commission was established in early 2008. Third,

development andpeaceful rise. Hands-off civilian control is symptomatic of the larger problem of the under-
institutionalization of civilian control mechanisms. Without firmer civilian oversight, the kinds of hawkish PLA
pronouncements and activities highlighted are likely to persist with the attendant risks. Indicators of enhanced civilian oversight and control would include a revamping of the
CMC to have greater civilian representation, an end to active-duty general officers serving as the Minister of National Defense, a reconstituted Defense Ministry with more than mere ceremonial
functions, and a vigorous initiative to develop a cadre of civilian defense specialists in Chinas national legislature, as well as in think tanks and universities. Such developments are unlikely to occur in the
Military members being permitted or even encouraged to
near future. To conclude, there are civil-military gaps in Chinas peaceful rise strategy.

express warlike bravado and engage in overzealous actions seem to demonstrate the point. If Beijing expects other nations to
accept Chinese claims about desiring a peaceful rise and yearns to be treated as a responsible great power, then the words and deeds of soldiers ought to be more consistent with those proclaimed
policies and aspirations.
 AT: Self fulfilling prophecy

The prophecy has already been fulfilled current Chinese aggression escalates in
response to US caution engagement makes bad behavior more likely
Bosco, 16 - Joseph A. Bosco served in the office of the secretary of defense, 2002-2010. He is a member of
the U.S.-China task force at the Center for the National Interest (China Expects the U.S. To Roll Over 4/6,
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-expects-the-us-roll-over-15688?page=show
given the Communist Party of Chinas implacable view of the United States and its allies as the enemy
More realistically, however,

despite more than four decades of Western engagement and its expectation that it can achieve U.S.
acquiescence to the dominance Xi seeks, China will almost certainly become even more ambitious and aggressive.
The report lists "policies of the United States" as the first among the "external factors [that] will certainly influence Chinas future course." But it describes the official American perception of China
more in terms of diplomacy and engagement than deterrence and containment. The United States views China less as an existential threat than as a challenge to its friendships, alliances, and military and
economic leadership in the region. Additionally, the study sees Japan as having an equally muted reaction to Chinas saber-rattling: [B]oth the United States and Japan have extensive commercial ties to
and personal contacts with China, and China presents only an ambiguous military threat. The underlying Western fear since Nixon's opening to China and through eight subsequent administrations is
that "treating China as an enemy will make it one." There is the risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the United States and Japan base their policies on
the expectation of a powerful and aggressive China, and take preparatory measures that Beijing interprets as a containment strategy, China might decide to adopt aggressive policies to defend itself,
China's leaders clearly understand this Western reticence and
leading to a cycle of armament and tension that neither side desired.

consistently exploit it to their advantage, pressing at each incrementally assertive point and expecting the West to exercise the
necessary prudence to avoid confrontation and escalation. In the military and security areas, China has been deterred from direct aggression, but has advanced its
interests using sophisticated forms of military coercion and simple gunboat diplomacy, as well as a wide range of nonmilitary activities. The paper repeats the conventional wisdom that China sees "the
need for a peaceful international environment" in order to pursue its domestic economic development. But Beijing relies on an acquiescent and somewhat intimidated neighborhood to ensure the peace
while it pursues its ambitious goals by means just short of outright war. The ink was hardly dry on the SPF report when fresh news arrived of an even more threatening move by China on its islands: the
installation of anti-ship missiles that will constrain activities of the U.S. and Japanese navies among others. As the Obama and Abe administrations digest this important SPF report, they will hopefully
the more powerful and aggressive China is already here. The future is now, and it is dire unless U.S.
recognize that

policymakers send some strong deterrence and dissuasion messages to China, backed up by
and Japanese

meaningful actions. At the very least, that means regular freedom of navigation and overflight operations in the East and South China Seas that actually challenge China's unlawful
sovereignty claimsnot merely innocent passages which effectively reinforce them.
 AT: No modernization

China is heavily expanding modernization and it increases conflict escalation risks

Chase & Chan 16-*Senior Political Scientist & ** a project associate at the rand Corporation.(Michael
&Arthur, Chinas Evolving Strategic Deterrence Concepts and Capabilities
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt1bz3vx1, The Washington Quarterly)//SL
Strategists often think of strategic deterrence as synonymous with nuclear deterrence, the top of the escalation ladder; China does not. In fact, Chinas strategic deterrence concepts are evolving and
expanding, along with strides in strategic weapons capabilities, reflecting Beijings increasing concerns about external security threats and a growing emphasis on protecting Chinese interests in space and
cyberspace. After relying on relatively rudimentary strategic deterrence capabilities for decades, China has developed and deployed a variety of new
strategic weapons systems in recent years. An important turning point was the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by the United States in May
1999, which Chinese leaders viewed as deliberate. This incident motivated Beijing to devote even greater resources to improving the

capabilities of the PLA by focusing on asymmetric approaches to exploiting potential U.S. military
vulnerabilities and developing advanced, high-technology weapons to deteror, if necessary, counterU.S.
military intervention in any conflict involving China. According to an article by two Chinese military researchers, Chinas development of advanced weapons and equipment must
adhere to the principal that what the enemy fears is what we develop, an approach that was reportedly first articulated following the May 1999 Embassy bombing and that continues to guide Chinas
approach to developing its strategic deterrence capabilities today.3 Reflecting the progress China has made in its strategic weapons programs since this guidance was put forward, the Peoples Liberation
Army (PLA) displayed an impressive collection of nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles during the elaborate September 2015 military parade the Chinese Communist Party held to mark the 70th
China is also continuing to develop and test even more advanced strategic weapons,
anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of WWII.

such as new anti-satellite (ASAT) systems capable of holding U.S. space systems at risk, more modern road-mobile intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), and hypersonic glide

vehicles (HGVs) that could further enhance Chinas nuclear deterrent posture or perhaps give Beijing its own

conventional prompt global strike capability Yet, there is much more to Chinas thinking about strategic deterrence than new weaponry. Indeed, PLA publications
indicate that Chinas broad concept of strategic deterrence is a multi-dimensional set of military and even non-military capabilities combined to protect Chinese interests. For China, powerful military
capabilities of several typesincluding nuclear, conventional, space, and information warfareare all essential components of a credible strategic deterrent.5 Chinese military publications indicate that
non-military aspects of national powermost notably diplomatic, economic, and scientific and technological strengthalso contribute to strategic deterrence alongside military capabilities. For Chinese
the military components have the most immediate, direct ability to influence a potential
strategists, however,

adversarys decision-making calculus. The broad contours of Chinas concept of integrated strategic deterrence have
remained relatively consistent, albeit with some elaboration and development over the years including a growing emphasis on its space
and information components. Indeed, the increasing importance PLA strategists attach to deterrence in space and cyberspace should come as no surprise, as this tracks with
Chinas assessment that military competition in those domains is intensifying and that the struggle for information dominance is likely to prove

decisive in future wars.7 As the concept of integrated strategic deterrence has evolved to keep pace with Chinas emerging interests and changes in military technology, the capabilities
supporting it have undergone an impressive transformation. Indeed, at least some parts of this integrated strategic deterrence concept went beyond the PLAs actual capabilities initially, as China lacked
many of the required force structure elements to fully support it. However, Chinese strategic deterrence capabilities are now rapidly catching up with the concept of integrated strategic deterrence. This
. China is deploying a more credible nuclear deterrent composed
is true across the nuclear, conventional, space, and information warfare domains

of silo-based ICBMs, some of which are equipped with MIRVs; more survivable road-mobile ICBMs; and nuclear-powered ballistic missile
submarines (SSBNs). Beijing is also strengthening its conventional military forces. In particular, the air, naval, and missile capabilities most relevant to
countering U.S. military intervention provide China with increasingly potent conventional deterrence capabilities, which constitute an increasingly important part of its overall integrated strategic
deterrence posture. As a result of these improvements in nuclear, conventional, space, and information warfare forces, Chinese military publications are now replete with references to how China can
conduct strategic deterrence operations, both under general peacetime conditions and in crisis scenarios. According to a recent publication by the PLAs National Defense University (NDU), practical
examples could include actions such as displaying advanced weapons, carrying out military exercises, adjusting military deployments, increasing readiness levels, or even carrying out information attacks
The combination of these developments in Chinas strategic deterrence
or limited firepower strikes as a warning to a wouldbe adversary.8

could have serious implications for the United States. In particular, Chinas growing
concepts and the PLAs growing strategic deterrence capabilities

capabilities will likely intensify challenges related to extended deterrence and assurance of U.S. allies, some of
whom may be concerned that Chinas growing strategic weapons capabilities will undermine the willingness
or ability of the United States to come to their aid in the event of a regional crisis or conflict. As China continues developing advanced strategic weapons capabilities, the
PLA will be able to offer leaders in Beijing a variety of new options, some of which might lead them to consider changes in Chinas traditional policies and strategic and operational concepts, such as its
Chinas further development of its integrated strategic deterrence
longstanding nuclear no-first-use (NFU) policy. Finally,

concepts and capabilities is likely to create escalation risks that could make the prospect of a crisis
or conflict over potential flashpoints, such as Taiwan or maritime disputes in the East and South
China Seas, more dangerous for the United States than any situation it has faced since the end of the
Cold War.
Risks of nuclear escalation are high
Chase & Chan 16-*Senior Political Scientist & ** a project associate at the rand Corporation.(Michael
&Arthur, Chinas Evolving Strategic Deterrence Concepts and Capabilities
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt1bz3vx1, The Washington Quarterly)//SL
In a crisis or conflict, the PLA could adopt a much higher intensityand potentially very dangerous approach to
deterrence operations, such as by increasing the readiness level of its strategic missile force, displaying its
nuclear, long-range conventional strike or anti-satellite weapons to send a deterrence signal, conducting nuclear or
conventional missile test launches, or even conducting information attacks or limited conventional strikes designed to compel

an adversary to submit to Chinese demands. There are important implications for the United States in several areas. First, Chinas evolving integrated strategic
deterrence concepts and its growing strategic weapons capabilities could have important implications for U.S. extended deterrence and assurance of allies and partners in the region. Allies and partners
may be concerned not only about the possibility they will become targets of Chinese threats in some or all of the relevant domains, but also that China could wield its growing capabilities in ways that
are intended to undermine U.S. willingness or ability to intervene militarily to support them in the event of a crisis or conflict in the region For example, Sugio Takahashi of Japans National Institute for
Defense Studies (NIDS) writes that if China feels it has deployed a sufficiently powerful strategic deterrent against the United States in the form of its nuclear forces and conventional antiaccess and
area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, it may be encouraged to increase its aggressive creeping expansion in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. 63 Indeed, worries about the credibility of U.S.
extended deterrence could become increasingly prominent as Chinas capabilities continue to advance, and this could make it more and more difficult for the United States to successfully assure its
Chinas assessment of its external security environment and its growing capabilities may
regional allies and partners.64 Second,

motivate changes in its thinking about the requirements of integrated strategic deterrence, potentially leading to
changes in policy and strategy that could be destabilizing or otherwise problematic for U.S. security interests in the region. PLA strategists
appear to regard U.S. rebalancing to Asia as part of what they often characterize as a broader pattern of
U.S. attempts to contain Chinas growing power and influence. Moreover, they are concerned about the possibility that future improvements in U.S. military
capabilities, particularly in the areas of missile defense and conventional prompt global strike (CPGS) capabilities, could undermine the deterrent credibility of Chinas strategic missile force. For
example, according to SMS 2013, if the United States ever used CPGS to launch conventional attacks against Chinas nuclear missiles, it could force China into a passive position, greatly influence
Chinese analysts appear to be concerned that
Chinas nuclear counterstrike capabilities, and weaken its nuclear deterrent effectiveness. 65 In particular,

Washington could believe, even if incorrectly, that the combination of missile defense and CPGS capabilities
would enable it to coerce China with nuclear threats. Additionally, although China is currently focused on the United States as the main potential threat to its
security, other countries could begin to figure more prominently in Chinas strategic deterrence calculations in the future. Even though China currently focuses heavily on the United States as the main
potential adversary, it is possible China could become more concerned about Indian or even Russian nuclear capabilities, which could result in changes such as a larger arsenal of theater nuclear missiles.
Along with the consequences of possible changes in Chinese security assessments, Chinas growing capabilities will create some new options for Chinese strategists and decision-makers, probably
leading to debates about many aspects of Chinas approach to strategic deterrence. For example, at least one important PLA publication has raised the possibility that as the PLAs strategic early warning
capabilities improve, China may want to adopt a launch-under-attack or launch-on-warning posture for its nuclear missile forcemeaning that China would launch its own nuclear weapons upon
receiving warning of an enemys nuclear launchan option the authors suggest would strengthen deterrence without violating Chinas nuclear no-first-use (NFU) policy.66 Even more disturbingly,
although many nuclear and arms control specialists see launch-on-warning (LOW) or launch-under-attack (LUA) as having the potential to be extremely destabilizing if adopted, it remains unclear if
Chinese analysts have fully considered the risks associated with such an approach, as sources such as SMS 2013 do not discuss the possibility that it could undermine strategic stability. Indeed, as one
observer has pointed out, the authors of SMS 2013 do not consider any of the problems that could result from adopting a launch on warning policy, such as the dangers associated with the risk of a
Chinas integrated strategic
false warning, ambiguous indications of a possible enemy attack, or other errors in judgment by operators or decision-makers.67 Finally,

deterrence concepts and capabilities have the potential to create serious escalation risks for other reasons. One potential problem is that
Chinas thinking about the relationships between the nuclear, conventional, space, and cyber components of
its strategic deterrent appears to be somewhat unclear, at least as reflected in the relevant chapters in key PLA publications such as SMS
2013. In particular, it is unclear how much attention PLA strategists have devoted to assessing the ways in which effects in one of these domains could trigger escalation in other domains. For example,
based on the available sources, it is uncertain whether Chinese strategists have fully considered the potential implications of attacks against strategically important space systems, such as missile early
available Chinese military publications do not appear
warning satellites or communications satellites, associated with strategic nuclear operations.68 Similarly,

to incorporate detailed assessments of the risks of inadvertent or accidental escalation, topics that have been of great interest to
U.S. analysts in recent years.69 Organizational issues offer other challenges for managing escalation. One is the fact that a single component of Chinas military,

PLA Rocket Force, is responsible for nuclear and conventional land-based missile forces, raising the
possibility of miscommunication if it is difficult or impossible for an adversary to distinguish between nuclear and
conventional deterrence signals. If in the midst of some future crisis, China conducted a test launch of a
missile that is capable of conducting both nuclear and conventional strikes, the intended message might be
unclear to the recipient. Additionally, if a conventional war breaks out, enemy air strikes or perhaps cyber attacks
aimed at degrading Chinas conventional missile force could be misinterpreted as an attempt to undermine
Chinas nuclear retaliatory capabilities, perhaps leading to inadvertent escalation. Still other problems could arise as a
result of a preference for surprise, deep strikes, and rapid and decisive operations, which could be highly
destabilizing in a crisis, especially if both sides feel strong pressure to escalate early in order to seize the initiative, or to limit the risk of losing highly valuable capabilities that could be
vulnerable to a preemptive strike by the adversary.
 AT: Chinese economic collapse now

Chinas Economy wont collapse according to the best Data-Assumes your warrants
Rudd 15- Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 (Kevin, How to Break the Mutually Assured
Misperception Between the U.S. and China, The World Post, 4-20-2015,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-rudd/us-china-relations-kevin-rudd-report_b_7096784.html)//SL
1. Sorry, but on balance, the Chinese economic model is probably sustainable. On the sustainability of Chinese economic growth as the continuing basis of
Chinese national power, on balance we should assume a Chinese growth rate in the medium to medium-high range (i.e. in
excess of 6 percent) as probable for the period under review. This takes into account both official and unofficial statistics on
the recent slowing of the rate. It also takes into account lower levels of global demand for Chinese exports, high levels of

domestic debt, the beginning of a demographically driven shrinking in the labor force, continued high levels of domestic savings,
at best modest levels of household consumption, an expanding private sector still constrained by state-owned monoliths, and a growing environmental crisis. But it also

takes into account the vast battery of Chinese policy responses to each of these and does not assume that these are by definition destined to fail. Furthermore, if Chinas growth rate

begins to falter, China has sufficient fiscal and monetary policy capacity to intervene to ensure the growth rate
remains above 6 percent, which is broadly the number policy makers deem to be necessary to maintain social
stability. It is equally unconvincing to argue that Chinas transformation from an old economic growth model (based on a combination of high levels of state infrastructure investment and low-
wage, labor-intensive manufacturing for export), to a new model (based on household consumption, the services sector and a strongly innovative private sector) is also somehow doomed to failure. This
is a sophisticated policy blueprint developed over many years and is necessary to secure Chinas future growth trajectory through different drivers of demand to those that have powered Chinese growth
to assume that
rates in the past. There is also a high level of political backing to drive implementation. The process and progress of implementation has so far been reasonable. Moreover,

Chinas seasoned policy elites will somehow prove to be less capable in meeting Chinas next set of economic
policy challenges than they have been with previous sets of major policy challenges over the last 35 years is
just plain wrong. China does face a bewildering array of policy challenges and it is possible that any one of these could significantly derail the governments economic program. But it is
equally true that Chinese policy elites are more sophisticated now than at any time since the current period of reform

began back in 1978, and are capable of rapid and flexible policy responses when necessary. For these reasons, and others
concerning the structure of Chinese politics, the report explicitly rejects the China collapse thesis recently advanced by David Shambaugh. It
would also be imprudent in the extreme for Americas China policy to be based on an implicit (and sometimes explicit) policy assumption that China will either economically stagnate or politically
implode because of underlying contradictions in its overall political economy. This would amount to a triumph of hope over cold, hard analysis.
 AT: No war

Err neg history

Coker 15- Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Head of
Department (Christopher, The Improbable War, 15 January 2015, Oxford University Press, pp.8)//SL
When contemplating the improbablea conflict between the United States and Chinathe analogy that is most
frequently drawn upon is the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. In many respects, writes Charles Emmerson, the world on the eve of the
Great War seems not so much the world of a century ago as the world of today, curiously refracted through time: It is impossible to look at it without an uncanny feeling of recognition, ... telescoping a
One of the most nota- ble parallels between the world on the eve of the First
century into the blink of an eye (Emmerson, 2013a).

World War and the world of today is the fact that so many leading thinkers felt that a great power conflict
was as improbable in 1914 as many do today. The causes of the First World War in 1914 have been the subject of an endless debate. The general consensus is that the Great
Powers did not so much sleepwalk into war as blunder into it, in part because they thought such a conflict
was so improbable. In the Balkan war of 1912, both AustriaHungary and Russia mobilised parts of their armed forces near their common borders. Bluff, everything a bluff, Alfred von
Kiderlen-Wachter, the German foreign minister, wrote that year to a friend. War could only happen if one were so unfathomably foolish to bluff so badly as to be unable to back down ... I really
consider none of the current statesmen an example of such oxen (Afflerbach, 2007: 179). A few years earlier the director of British Military Operations had been asked whether it would not require
inconceivable stupidity on the part of statesmen to ignite a European conflagration. His response: Inconceivable stupidity is just what youre going to get (Hastings, 2013). One of the lessons that can
be drawn from the war is the fact that the leaders of the Great Powers eventually took too many risks because they genuinely
believed that great power conflict was unlikely. Jack Beatty, one of the leading figures in the new school of historians, dis- tinguishes three stances with regard to
the origins of the waravoid- able, improbable and inevitable. War would only have been avoidable if the political leaders had set out to

do everything in their power to avoid it. They did not do so, in part because they thought it so unlikely. War would only have been improbable if they realised how only
remarkable crisis management skills could have kept the continent at peace given the tinder box nature of European politics. It therefore fol-lows that war was largely

inevitable because the politicians did not take the prospect of war seriously enough (Beatty, 2012: 4).
Historians will never arrive at a final agreement on the causes of the war. Some contend that the war resulted from political miscalcula-
tion, while others attribute it to the Central Powers decision to risk a successful preventative war. However, the factor underlying all of the contending

explanations is the fact that the politicians on all sides con- cluded that war was improbable with the result
that they did too little to avert it. The world is in danger of making exactly the same mistakes today , as we
are telling ourselves the same stories we did in 1914. The pre- vailing complacency about great power conflict is much the same, as too is the misplaced liberal assumption that inter-state war has
become almost extinct or anachronistic. This is exactly the kind of thinking that could lead to another conflict in the near future. This book aims to prize inter-state war from the grasp of the rational
History
actor modelists with their narrow understanding of the world, and the economists and globalists who think distance is dead because geography has been trumped by globalisation.

does not suggest that we are part of a process of continual moral improvement and ever greater progress. The
course of international relations over the centuries is instead more akin to a pendulum swinging from good
times to bad and from war to peace, and this pendulum may swing back once again.

Multiple flashpoints and history suggest the risk is high

Coker 15- Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Head of
Department (Christopher, The Improbable War, 15 January 2015, Oxford University Press, pp.33-34)//SL
The idea that another great war is improbable is also proposed in Noah Feldmans Cool War: The Future of Global Competition (2013). Both sides, he contends, have too much to lose. War would

just because
simply cripple the economies of both countries, and it would also endanger Party rule in the case of China. It would simply be irrational to go to war. But

something is irrational does not mean it cannot happen. There are many examples in history of
intelligent governments being right for the wrong reasons, and when driven by their anxieties and demons,
wrong for the wrong reasons. People are rarely right for the right reasons. There are plenty of flashpoints that could provoke a
conflict (Taiwan for one), and there are many real obstacles to coop- eration, however open-minded the protagonists. Feldman is probably right on at least one point: in suggesting
that American exceptionalism may prove a problem. From the perspective of the Chinese leadership, it must be frustrating to negotiate policies with a

government that views CCP rule as illegitimate because of the undemocratic nature of Chinas political system, and which would like to see the entire regime come
to an end. As Feldman observes, this is not a good starting point for mutual trust or respect. But the United States is unlikely to alter its position in the
near future, and the two societies will find themselves on a collision course if neither can earn the trust and
respect of the other.
 AT: Interdependence checks

Leaders prioritize security over prosperity

Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
It would be wrong to argue that economic interdependence does not matter at all for the fostering of peace. Leaders do care greatly about their countrys prosperity, and in
certain circumstances that concern will help dampen any enthusiasm they might have for war. The key question, however, is whether such calculations are likely to decisively
influence policymakers in a wide variety of circumstances. In other words, will the impact of economic interdependence be weighty enough to serve as a firm basis for peace
between China and its potential rivals over a long period of time? I believe there are good reasons to doubt that concerns about mutual prosperity will keep Asia peaceful as
China grows more powerful. At the most basic level, political calculations often trump economic ones when they come into
conflict. This is certainly true regarding matters of national security, because concerns about survival are invariably at stake in the
security realm, and they are more important than worries about prosperity. As emphasized, if you do not survive,
you cannot prosper. It is worth noting in this regard that there was substantial economic interdependence and prosperity
among the European great powers before 1914. Nevertheless, World War I happened. Germany, which was principally
responsible for causing that conflict, was bent on preventing Russia from growing more powerful while at the same time trying to become a hegemon in Europe. Politics
overwhelmed economics in this important case.

Nationalism trumps economic interdependence

Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
Politics also tends to win out over concerns about prosperity when nationalism affects the issue at stake. Consider
Beijings position on Taiwan. Chinese leaders have stressed that they will go to war if Taiwan declares its
independence, even though they believe the ensuing conflict would damage Chinas economy. Of course,
nationalism is at the core of Chinese thinking on Taiwan; that island is considered sacred territory. One might also
note that history is littered with civil wars, and in almost every case there was substantial economic
interdependence between the combatants before the fighting broke out. But political calculations proved to be more influential in
the end.
 AT: Confucianism checks

Confucianism wont cause Chinese pacifism

Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago, co-director of Program of
International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics, October 25th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204)
An especially popular claim among Chinese is that their country can rise peacefully because it has a deeply
Confucian culture. Confucianism, they argue, not only promotes moral virtue and harmony but also explicitly rules out acting aggressively toward neighboring countries. Instead, the
emphasis is on self-defense. China, so the argument goes, has historically acted in accordance with the dictates of Confucianism and has not behaved like the European great powers, Japan, or the
United States, which have launched offensive wars in pursuit of hegemony and generally acted according to the dictates of realism. China, in contrast, has behaved much more benignly toward other
states: it has eschewed aggression and pursued humane authority instead of hegemonic authority. This perspective is popular among academics as well as policymakers in China. Many Chinese
scholars like it because they see it as an alternative to the principal international relations theories, which are said to be Eurocentric and therefore oblivious to Chinas exceptional culture. Confucianism
is obviously a China-centric theory. For example, Xin Li and Verner Worm write, Chinese culture advocates moral strength instead of military power, worships kingly rule instead of hegemonic rule,
and emphasizes persuasion by virtue. Yan Xuetong, who is probably Chinas best-known international relations theorist in the West, maintains, The rise of China will make the world more civilized. . .
. The core of Confucianism is benevolence. . . . This concept encourages Chinese rulers to adopt benevolent governance . . . rather than hegemonic governance. . . . The Chinese concept of
benevolence will influence international norms and make international society more civilized. Chinese policymakers offer similar arguments. For instance, the former premier Wen Jiabao told a
Harvard audience in 2003, Peace loving has been a time-honored quality of the Chinese nation. And one year later, President Hu Jintao declared, China since ancient times has had a fine tradition of
sincerity, benevolence, kindness and trust towards its neighbors. The clear implication of these comments is that China, unlike the other great powers in history, has acted like a model citizen on the
world stage. There are two problems with this theory of Confucianism. First, it does not reflect how Chinese elites have actually talked and
thought about international politics over their long history. In other words, it is not an accurate description of Chinas
strategic culture over the centuries. More important, there is little historical evidence that China has acted in accordance with
the dictates of Confucianism. On the contrary, China has behaved just like other great powers, which is to say
it has a rich history of acting aggressively and brutally toward its neighbors. There is doubtless a prominent Confucian strand in Chinese culture going
back more than 2,000 years. But as Alastair Iain Johnston points out, a second and more powerful strand is at play in Chinese thinking about

international politics. He calls it the parabellum paradigm and notes that it places a high degree of value on the use of pure violence
to resolve security conflicts. This paradigm, he emphasizes, does not make significantly different predictions about behavior from that of a simple structural realpolitik model.
That is why he uses the term parabellum paradigm interchangeably with cultural realism, which is the title of his book. Very important is Johnstons contention that Confucianism and cultural
realism cannot claim separate but equal status in traditional Chinese strategic thought. Rather, the parabellum paradigm is, for the most part, dominant.
 AT: Nuclear deterrence solves

China Modernization is real and wrecks US deterrence credibility

GADY 16 Senior Fellow at the East West Institute, M.A. in Strategic
Studies/International Economics at Johns Hopkins, analyst for the Project on National
Security Reform (congressionally funded non-profit), research assistant at the Institute for
National Strategies Studies of the National Defense University (Franz-Stefan, Confirmed:
China is Upgrading ICBMs With Multiple Warheads, US-China Perception Monitor,
http://www.uscnpm.org/blog/2016/02/19/confirmed-china-is-upgrading-icbms-with-multiple-
warheads//AK)

For the past several months, China has been upgrading single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple,
independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), according to U.S. intelligence agencies, The Washington Times reports. China is re-
engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads, the head of U.S. Strategic Command Admiral Cecil D.
Haney said in a January 22 speech. On February 9, the Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper noted that China continues to modernize its nuclear

forces by adding more survivable road-mobile systems and enhancing its silo-based systems. U.S. defense officials revealed
that the Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) has upgraded its older liquid-fuelled, silo-based Dongfeng 5A ICBM with MIRVs

containing three (some sources say eight) warheads. An advanced variant of the Dongfeng 5, the DF-5B, was displayed during Beijings grand military parade
to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Japan and the end of the Second World War, held in September 2015 (See: Heres What You Need to Know About Chinas Grand Military
the PLARF is estimated to possess 20
Parade). The liquid-fueled DF-5B purportedly has a range of 12,000-15,000 kilometers (6,835-7,456 miles). Overall,

Dongfeng DF-5B ICBMs, although some analysts believe that the number of missiles has increased beyond
20. When you add the possibility of MIRVed DF-5s exceeding 20, to the imminent deployment of the road-mobile and rail-mobile MIRVed DF-41, and the potential for a MIRVed version of the
DF-31 called the DF-31B, it becomes possible to consider that China may reach 500 or more ICBM warheads in the next

few years, Rick Fisher, a China military analyst, told The Washington Times. This, combined with China aggressive development of missile defenses,
space warfare capabilities and possible non-nuclear prompt global strike missiles, will quickly undermine
confidence by U.S. allies in the extended U.S. nuclear deterrent, he added. High-confidence assessments of the
numbers of Chinese nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads are not possible due to Chinas
lack of transparency about its nuclear program, the latest U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report notes. However, despite the
uncertainty surrounding Chinas stockpiles of nuclear missiles and nuclear warheads, it is clear Chinas nuclear
forces over the next three to five years will expand considerably and become more lethal and survivable (). The
DF-5 missile series will eventually be phased out and replaced by the solid-fueled DF-41 (CSS-X-20) ICBM, last tested in August 2015 (See: China Tests New Missile Capable of Hitting Entire United
States). Once operational, it will be the PLARFs most advanced ICBM to date. The re-engineering of Chinas ICBM force has been known for some time, although no unclassified assessment has so
far been been able to confirm details of Chinas ICBMs modernization effort.
 AT: Chinese soft power

Soft powers a broken record for china theyll never sustain it and liberal democratic
values undermine CCP stability
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on
Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)
Though this resolute
The first and most important aim pursued by Chinas leaders since the founding of the modern Chinese state has been the preservation of internal order.

pursuit of internal order was 9 rooted in the CCPs self-interest, it also stemmed from a deeper Chinese phobia
of social chaos and political fragmentation or collapse, usually seen as just-around-the-corner and often closely associated with
[fears of] aggression and intervention from the outside.14 Because of the historical memory of domestic divisions providing incentives for foreign
manipulation and even aggression, Chinas rulers have sought to suppress all political disquietincreasingly by appeals to

nationalism, but by coercion when necessary. In contemporary times, this fixation on preserving domestic order has become particularly acute, paradoxically
because of Chinas recent economic success. High growth has resulted in desires for expanded personal liberties, but the regime has responded by restricting freedom of expression in various realms.
Rapid economic growth has also dramatically accentuated stratification and social inequalities while increasing social dislocation and corruption nationally. As a result, the same tool that
has accelerated Chinas rise in the global system has also weakened the CCPs domestic legitimacy, and
political resentment against Beijing has grown, especially in the Han-minority areas of the country. Despite Chinas meteoric economic
success, its leadership does not possess easy solutions to the current challenges of governance and legitimacy.
Surrendering power in favor of genuine democracy is unthinkable for the Communist regime, and the palliatives offered by
anticorruption campaigns, the incorporation of rule by law (as opposed to rule of law), the increased invocation of classical texts in an effort to seek validation in tradition, the growing

ideological emphasis on promoting Chinese values, the promotion of a new Chinese Dream centered on national rejuvenation, improvement of peoples
livelihoods, prosperity, construction of a better society, and military strengthening, and the stimulation of nationalism have not yet resolved the

crisis of legitimacy that now engulfs the CCP.15 Chinas Communist rulers remain threatened by U.S.
campaigns in support of democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of minorities, all of which are viewed in Beijing as thinly
veiled attempts at either fomenting secession or engineering regime change. In an effort to ensure that American democratic values and policies do not undermine the CCPs

hold on power, Chinese rulers have prosecuted a multipronged ideological campaign that includes a strident defense of sovereignty
and a concerted rejection of all foreign interest in the nations internal affairs, intense surveillance of suspect domestic groups and
nongovernmental organizations operating in China, and focused propaganda efforts to amplify Chinese nationalism and mobilize public support in defense of the regime and the state.16 Beneath these
Given the CCPs deep-seated fears for its own survival amid the current economic and social ferment in
ideational efforts, however, lies the iron fist.

China, the party has continually expanded its capabilities for domestic coercion , to the point where its internal security budget, exemplified by
the Peoples Armed Police (PAP), is larger than that of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) itself. Clearly, internal security competes with, and could even trump, external security. Further complicating
matters, the partys army fears finding itself in the awkward position of having to defend the purported representatives of the people against the peoples own wratha conundrum that may prove to be
explosive if events like Tiananmen Square were to recur in the future.
 AT: Lee social identity theory

Lee isnt aff he says engagement is just as bad as containment

Lee, 16 - Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles (James Jungbok Lee (2016)
Will Chinas Rise Be Peaceful? A Social Psychological Perspective, Asian Security, 12:1, 29-52, DOI:
10.1080/14799855.2016.1140644
Overall, the findings of the article are significant for two main reasons. First, the article sheds light on the critical question of what the United States optimal strategy should be for enabling Chinas
peaceful rise. JohnMearsheimer, a leading realist,argues that containment will be Americas most effective strategy by far. In particular,
he calls for the US to keep Beijing from using its military forces to conquer territory and more generally expand its influence in Asia and, towards this end, to seek to form a balancing coalition
In contrast, G. John Ikenberry, a leading liberal, claims that the United States should
against China with as many of [the latters] neighbors as possible. 171

strengthen the global system of governance that underpins the Western order and make it so expansive and so institutionalized that China has no choice but to
become a full-fledged, cooperative member.172 However, the findings of this article indicate that neither of these recommendations are necessary nor

sufficient for pacifying Chinas rise and are, if anything, counterproductive. That is, because both of these recommendations entail the United
States subjugating China under an order (whether it be economic or military) crafted under its leadership, they are likely to be perceived by China as acts of

disrespect towards its sovereignty designed to prevent its [peaceful] pursuit of becoming a distinctive great
power. Therefore, perhaps it now is time for Washington to transition away from heavily relying on those conventional prescriptions for
containment or engagement, which by definition treat China as a subordinate. Instead, it should begin implementing policies on a level
playing field this time that genuinely display recognition and respect toward Chinas core interests and status.