CHINASCOPE – How China Deals with the U.S. Strategy to Contain China.

Chinascope has translated an essay (?????????????????) published in December on the website of “Seeking Truth” (?????), theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist Party.

It is a must read. The author, Xu Yunhong ???, lists 6 US strategies for containing China and suggests 7 counter strategies for China:

U.S. Containment Strategies

1. Trade War

2. Exchange Rate War

3. Public Opinion War

4. Anti-China Campaign

5. Military Exercises and Simulated Warfare

6. Creating an Anti-China Alliance

China’s Counter Strategies

1. Economic Warfare

2. Financial War

3. Military Exercises and Simulated Warfare

4. Space War

5. Attacking a Nearby Enemy

6. Befriending Distant Enemies

7. Public Opinion War

This essay did not appear on a marginal, angry nationalist website. How does the US best work with a China that increasingly seems to view the US as a power in terminal decline that will inevitably and “rightfully” be supplanted by China?

Is Xu Yunhong out of the mainstream of Chinese strategic thinking?

I don’t think we know, in part because most Western China hands may only talk to people in the foreign ministry and think tanks who are more “westernized”, likely trained in “barbarian management” and who seem to have “cooler heads”. Does most Western analysis of China’s view of the world possibly convey some sort of a selection bias that leads us to believe the thinking above can’t possibly be mainstream? Perhaps the “cooler heads” are the ones on the margins, and instead the more nationalistic actors are the ones who represent what the majority of those in power believe? I wish we knew.

Hat tip to the indispensable blog Information Dissemination.