Xi Jinping’s costly plans and risky territorial ambitions

History has seen leaders whose thinking have been influenced by geography—who after gaining power usually felt the need for their territorially deficient or confined countries to expand as an expression of national power and prestige. Today, this is the case of Chinese President Xi Jinping who thinks of his country as being boxed in and which therefore feels the need to expand geographically toward the sea.

However, when one goes back to most of China’s history, the focus of its economic and political activities has been geographically inward with the end in view of enhancing economic productivity and instituting peace and harmony. Thus, when one looks at China’s vast topography, the land is sloping down to the east, with the lowland area being well-watered by the large Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The tilling of China’s fertile lands has been an important influence in its landward focus of socioeconomic development efforts. Its conflicts with its inland neighbors who live in porous borders have also contributed to the development of this inward focus in its efforts at building a militarily and economically strong state. Thus, we see the territorial expansion even of the powerful Han, Tang, and Yuan dynasties as being focused only within the confines of the continent.After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the subsequent regimes of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao were also characterized by inwardly focused administrations. But when Xi assumed China’s leadership, he strengthened mass surveillance, advocated for “wolf warrior diplomacy” and changed “China’s passivity” into an assertive strategy to defend China’s dubious claims over border and marine territories. The two major reasons why Beijing might undertake military action particularly against Taiwan are promoting China’s territorial and national identity aspirations and, more importantly, Xi’s own personal ambitions and sense of legacy.

However, going back again to China’s geography, Xi must be made to realize the blunt geographic truth for China that conflict in the Taiwan Strait would occur directly off the shore of its most economically and militarily important and populated coastal provinces. A war would have an immediate impact on the three provinces nearest to Taiwan, namely, Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang, which together account for 22 percent of China’s GDP and 17 percent of its population. And China has no geographic “defense-in-depth” endowment, i.e., no easily traversed space to which it can retreat. Moreover, the damage will not be limited to coastal provinces but will still spread to interior ones which are part of an intricate network of domestic supply chains. Ballistic missiles may even find their way to the Three Gorges Dam—the world’s largest capacity hydroelectric power station which if destroyed could cause widespread inundation of China’s great plains.

Thus, while China’s heartland suffers from the curse of proximity to enemy lines, its adversaries—particularly the United States—enjoy the blessing of “defense-in-depth” through the existence of what are called the three Pacific island chains. These island chains include the fortified areas of the Japanese archipelago, Taiwan, Mariana Islands that include Guam, Caroline Islands, Australia, and Hawaiian Islands, among others. The geomilitary capacities of these island chains provide strategic multiple encirclement by US and allied forces. Indeed, any invasion, especially on Taiwan, could entail major economic, financial, diplomatic, and reputational costs for China. Simply put, even if China gains Taiwan, it will have sacrificed its larger ambition of becoming a global superpower. This is the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory!

Aside from the need for the international community to advise Xi against his risky territorial ambitions, there is also a need for policymaking circles in Beijing to persuade him to abandon his costly plans and to just focus on enhancing China’s already robust economy. And they can remind him to just observe this sound advice of Deng Xiaoping: “Hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead.”

Meliton B. Juanico,
melitonbjuanico@gmail.com