Page:The Elements of the China Challenge (November 2020).pdf/34

 encompasses a strategic outlook that asserts China’s right and responsibility to rule the world “under heaven” through its uniquely refined culture and institutions. This strategic outlook also comprises views about China’s proper position in world affairs, the flow of history, military strategy and tactics, economic power, and domestic political order.

First, traditional Chinese thinking sees China as the “Middle Kingdom,” the central state surrounded by lesser states.

Second, traditional Chinese thinking understands history cyclically. While the fortunes of particular Chinese dynastic empires wax and wane, China remains at the center and deserving of exalted status.

Third, traditional Chinese thinking is marked by a long view of military strategy and tactics. Military power should be accumulated, stored, and showcased publicly but only to the extent necessary to dissuade adversaries from compelling China to use it. Tactics revolve around the slow, incremental acquisition of positions so that opponents only grasp after it’s too late that they are surrounded and face overwhelming power with no reasonable choice but to submit. Sometimes an opponent will suffer a crisis that creates “an auspicious moment” for the landing of a decisive blow.

Fourth, traditional Chinese thinking views economic power as a primary component of imperial power. China should use its advantages in size and excellence to convey to partners in commerce the benefits of acquiescing to a China-dominated system.

Fifth, traditional Chinese thinking features authoritarian proclivities. It is characterized by a statism that directs economics and society. It is home to a legalism that employs a strict penal code to create the domestic stability that allows for the building of wealth and military might. And it sees political power as properly residing in an elite bureaucracy rather than springing from the people.

This is not to deny the depth and crosscutting complexity of Chinese tradition and the richness of the moral, philosophical, and religious ideas within it. Nor is it to suggest that freedom and democracy cannot flourish in China, as they do in Taiwan and South Korea, and did in Hong Kong. It is to observe, rather, that the CCP draws on certain prominent components Rh