The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

     The Long Game is a really dense but fantastic book that covers the last thirty years or so in great detail, analyzing China's grand strategy in three phases: blunting, building, and displacing. Doshi writes that after the harsh international condemnation of the repression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the American invasion of Iraq in 1990-91, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, China began to dramatically shif its foreign policy. The Sino-Soviet Split in the 1950s and the rapprochement with the United States of the 1970s brought China closer to the United States. But once Russia faded as an enemy, it was clear to China that it was time to turn to protect itself from the USA now that China had begun to eclipse Russia to take the second position in international hegemony. Doshi describes the three phases by stating that:

"China initially accommodated a powerful but non-threatening United States after normalization; sought to blunt it after the Cold War's conclusion led it to see the United States as more threatening; began to build its own order after the Global Financial Crisis led it to see the United States as weakening; and may pursue regional dominance if the United States acquiesces or is defeated in a regional conflict."

I will say that the book is somewhat difficult and required my concentration to read, but that it was extremely rewarding and elucidating. Doshi is obviously extremely knowledgeable about the subject and extremely convincing about his point of view. I came away feeling like I'd just taken a course on Chinese grand strategy, which is about as good as I could hope for from a book like this.

    In international organizations in the 1990s and early 2000s, China sought to strengthen those that excluded the United States, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) while weakening those that included the United States, such as the East Asia Economic Group (EAEG) AKA the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a sort of free trade zone. In this same period, Chinese military forces focused on blunting American military power through sea denial, investing in submarines, missiles, and mines to ensure that the US Navy would not be able to approach China's shoreline. The prevailing philosophy of the time was Tao Guang Yang Hui: "keep a low profile and bide your time."

    A major shift emerged in the latter half of Hu Jintao's time as Premier, after the Global Financial Crisis. From 2008 to 2016, China focused on building regional order through sea control and amphibious capabilities, investing in aircraft carriers, surface warfare ships, a larger marine corps, and ports overseas. In 2007, almost 25 years after China had introduced its first minesweeping vessel, it introduced another, mass producing it for both minesweeping and mine-hunting. For comparison, Russia had gone through ten iterations in that time. Until 2010, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had not seriously invested in its amphibious capabilities. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, China modernized its force, but by 2000 the majority of Chinese vessels still could not navigate open ocean and of its 55 medium to large amphibious vessels, many were over 40 years old and in reserve. But in 2006, China began to invest in more significant sealift capabilities and decided to drastically increase its number of marines around the same time. While China had nearly 100,000 marines in the 1950s, it eliminated the branch in 1957, having abandoned its plans for an invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese marines were eventually reinitiated, but stayed at low numbers, with only about 12,000 for several decades.  China doubled its marines in 2017 and then announced plans to increase the count tenfold the previous level to reach 100,000 again, a huge number considering the PLAN has about 235,000 personnel. For reference, the US Navy has about 340,000 sailors and the Marine Corps has about 180,000 Marines on active duty. 

    Probably the most interesting portion of the book to me was when Doshi discussed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. After 2008 or so, China moved on from joining and stalling organizations to blunt US power to a strategy of launching or coopting its own international organizations. Doshi analyzes two of these: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The AIIB is the far more important one, and is the economic component of Chinese diplomacy, while CICA is the less important security component of Chinese grand strategy (not that security is less important to Chinese grand strategy, just that CICA is a less powerful/important organization). The decision to form the AIIB came out of the Global Financial Crisis and culminated in its founding in January 2016. The AIIB serves as a tool for China to advance both its policy goals and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Like other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), China can use the AIIB to coerce countries into doing its will, secure consent through providing public goods, and legitimize Chinese power. The AIIB started with capital of $100 billion, making it the about 2/3 the size of the Japanese/US-led Asian Development Bank (ADB) and half of the World Bank. These MDBs assign voting power based on how much each member-state donates. Here's some little charts I made comparing the three, which are the most important MDBs in the Asia-Pacific region. The first is funding/voting share, and the second is just some facts. I'm just getting these numbers from Wikipedia and other internet sources so they might be approximate or not up to date.

AIIB	ADB	World Bank
China: 26.5%	USA: 12.75%	USA: 15.85%
India: 8%	Japan: 12.75%	Japan 6.84%
Russia: 6.5%	China: 6.43%	China 4.42%
Germany: 4%	India: 6.32%	Germany: 4%
South Korea: 4%	Australia: 5.77%	UK + France (tie): 3.75%

	AIIB	ADB	World Bank
Established:	2016	1966	1944
Membership:	84	67	189 countries
Almost always run by a citizen of…:	China	Japan	America
Total capital:	Approx. $100 million	Approx. $150 million	Approx. $275 million

    All of these MDBs are essentially used as tools of diplomacy, whether to give out favorable loans to countries so that they vote the "right" way at the UN or to "encourage" countries to adopt the reforms that the leaders of each MDB want. Ultimately, these banks are a way to exert financial power over other countries, especially poor ones, that badly need capital. That's why it makes sense for China to want a bank of its own. In the initial discussions in 2014, China did not invite India, Japan, or the US, although China reversed in July 2014 and included India, and then later included the UK in March 2015. But China seeks to maintain disproportionate power in its own bank. Initially, China proposed $50 billion in funding with the overwhelming majority coming from China itself, which would preserve the majority vote for China. But Asian states took issue with this and didn't look like they would join, so in 2014 China doubled the number to $100 billion, saying it would provide half the funds for half the votes. By 2015, China reached the final situation, with more countries contributing and China getting 26% of the vote, enough to give it a veto over decisions that required a 3/4 majority. This may not sound like much, but it is far greater than the biggest shares countries have in most other MDBs. All of this is to say the AIIB is a very Chinese institution. 

    China has wielded its power in the AIIB more politically than economically. South Korea was initially promised a vice president position in the MDB in exchange for its support, but lost that slot to France when Seoul decided to deploy US missile defense systems. China also offered Australia a senior role at one point but renegued when it felt that Australia hesitated due to pressure from the US and Japan. In the ADB, China has blocked funds going to India because some of the funds would have gone to Arunachal Pradesh, which is partially disputed by China. China invests (using BRI) in many initiatives that are unprofitable economically, but may serve some political or military purpose. China's $8 million investment in a Malaysian port is considered to be completely redundant, but is in the critical Malacca Strait. China's Hambanatota port in Sri Lanka has lost hundreds of millions of dollars and is located right next to a port doing 100 times the traffic of Hambanatota in Columbo, but China is fine with taking on the liabilities in exchange for a 99-year lease. Similarly, China's port in Gwadar, Pakistan is a economic boondoggle, but China is getting a 40-year lease there. China's loans also come with a bitter aftertaste. Sri Lanka now pays China nearly the entirety of its annual government revenue in loan repayments, at an exorbitant 6% interest rate, 12 times higher than Japan's typical rate of .5%. The Maldives spends 20% of its budget paying back Chinese loans.

    CICA is a sort of weird case. It was this do-nothing organization of Asian states that Kazakhstan tried to the start in the 1990s but hadn't gone anywhere. China got the rotating presidency of the organization from 2014 to 2018, and set about legitimizing it to try to create a pan-Asian counterbalance to the United States. China advocates for creating a "community of common destiny" (a phrase that comes up a lot) with members benefitting from Chinese development, avoiding alliances, not involving outside states in disputes ("let's keep this between us"), and prioritizing the benefits of development due to association with China over external security guarantees. Basically, China sees this organization as a potential bulwark against the US making treaties with Asian countries. By buying them all off first, the US will find it harder to get in and use Asia's other countries to balance against China.

    In the final section of the book, Doshi analyzes the Chinese moves since 2016 or so that actually challenge US power. Around that time, Chinese leadership reached the decision that the US was in retreat globally but simultaneously waking up to the threat of China, making it prime time for China to act. Abandoning the policy of keeping a low profile and biding their time, Chinese leaders often repeated Xi Jinping, who heralded "great changes unseen in a century," essentially acknowledging that the time had come for China to overcome America.

    This would be a very bad thing for the world. For whatever criticisms other countries may have of the US-led international order, the Chinese-led world will be worse. Even now, China asserts illiberal goals to coerce its neighbors. In 2020, China sent a list of fourteen grievances to Australia that supposedly justified economic retaliations against the country, demanding that Australia reduce foreign investment screening, roll back legislation designed to counter foreign intelligence, cease human rights criticism of China, and change its position on the South China Sea, among others. China has also boycotted the NBA for perceived slights involving standing with Hong Kong, as well as other American companies, most of which cave to Communist demands. China uses a sort of perverse system of predatory lending to ensnare poorer countries in its orbit. By making bad loans to poor countries, China seizes forward military bases and ports as collateral, gaining locations in Djibouti, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Cambodia recently. Meanwhile, the system of US-led order has given us the presumption that states should be democratic, a reduction in genocide, nuclear proliferation, conquest, and biological weapons, and at least a patina of liberalism in world governments. If that world ceases to exist, it would be nothing short of a disaster.

    To combat China, Doshi gives many techniques the US should pursue with one major theme that I thought was important: our strategy cannot be symmetric. Unlike our battles with the USSR and Germany before that, we cannot beat China "dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan." China is too big. We have never faced an adversary with over 60% of our GDP, yet China surpassed our GDP in terms of purchasing power parity in 2014 and is expected to surpass us nominally by 2028. Doshi suggests that to counter China, we should think of our tactics in terms of blunting and building, much like China used to narrow the gap against us.

    To blunt Chinese military strength, Doshi advocates for investing in asymetric denial weapons (which would turn the South China Sea into no man's land), help allies to develop denial capabilities, and undermine Chinese efforts to build overseas bases by making statements that those countries risk our wrath in war and that we could offer them our own investments in times of peace. To blunt the Chinese economy, Doshi writes that we should try to multilateralize BRI to limit Chinese power over its own projects, train and assist our partners in assessing Chinese financing, use the information space to counter Chinese political corruption abroad to stop them from just bribing the leaders of illiberal countries, provide alternative financing to partners, and fight Chinese theft of our technologies. To engage in political blunting, we should join Chinese-led multilateral processes to shape or stall their development, elevate alternatives to Chinese-led organizations, contest Chinese leadership of international bodies, and promote legal standards that undermine Chinese information influence efforts.

    To engage in building American order militarily, Doshi thinks we should build resilience to Chinese anti-access/area-denial efforts by digging in on Pacific islands and planning to withstand intense attacks, building a diverse US posture in the Indo-Pacific (AKA not consolidating), and building resilient information infrastructure. Economically, Doshi advocates for maintaining dollar dominance, pushing existing institutions to create a rival program to BRI (or build new ones), creating an entity to audit the US supply chain, allowing more H-1B visas to bring talented individuals to the US, reinvesting in basic research (R&D is at all-time lows), reforming financial markets and tax policy to incentivize more long-term planning, building a competitive industrial policy, building an allied ecosystem of research and development among Western nations, and increasing state regulatory capacity. For political building, Doshi thinks we should build democratic alliances for governance issues. This would look something like a deeper version of the "D10," which includes the G7 plus India, South Korea, and Australia. I'm kind of surprised Doshi never outright says we need a Pacific NATO, but it seems like that's what he's hinting at more broadly. 

    In sum, great and thought-provoking book. I'll finish by pointing out one quore that stood out to me as identifying the biggest challenge we face in the United States right now. "The Soviets can do something after just one Politburo meeting. Can the Americans do that?" -Deng Xiaoping

Some other thoughts:

• India is in a very difficult situation. Not only is India facing Pakistan and Bangladesh to the West and East, it has China to the North, but also in the South due to serious Chinese influence over Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
• The SWIFT messaging system is really coming under intense pressure from Russian and Chinese attempts to displace it. After 2013 sanctions on Iran and 2014 sanctions on Russia, China and Russia have both sought to find alternatives to SWIFT, and the pace can only be increasing after the 2022 sanctions on Russia that confirmed their fears. I don't really see much of a problem with US policy, but soon we will have to deal with the costs of a more fractured/decoupled financial system.
• Doshi mentions something really interesting about the dollar. He says we suffer from a variant of Dutch Disease in which we export the dollar like some sort of rentier state exporting a commodity. He literally calls us the Saudi Arabia of money. I never thought about it in those terms, but it is true that "exporting dollars" (AKA having a strong dollar) has hurt our manufacturing.
• This book, like Shutdown by Adam Tooze, was written in 2021. And both feature significant Chinese pandemic triumphalism. I want to read more recent pieces on this, because that narrative seems completely debunked now that zero-Covid has shut China down for months while their vaccination rates are not very high and their vaccines don't even work that well.