By Ryan D. Martinson
A new study questions the conventional wisdom of a coordinated national strategy.
Everybody who meditates on Chinese foreign policy has a theory of how China functions. This is only human: the mind needs to make sense of all the information. The best analysts constantly reassess their theories in light of new data. In her recent Lowy Institute study, Linda Jacobson presents the English-speaking world with lots of new data – and a new theory to go with them.
It is generally accepted, at least in the United States, that China’s recent activism in the near seas of East Asia is a product of a coordinated national strategy. From Scarborough Shoal to HYSY 981, the goal is quiet expansion. Jakobson questions the conventional wisdom, making a case for ungoverned local initiative – buoyed by surging national power – as the primary factor driving events at sea. Although, at least in this reader’s view, Jacobson does not ultimately clinch the case, her paper is a valuable addition to the scholarship on China’s rise.
Jakobson profiles all of China’s major actors in the maritime sphere, from the highest policymaking bodies to the outspoken ranks of PLA propagandists. Above all, she focuses on China’s maritime law enforcement agencies, a natural choice given that if a strategy does exist they would be the primary instruments with which it would be implemented. In particular, she looks at the recently created China Coast Guard, suggesting a reform encountering stiff headwinds, a case that she makes with great persuasiveness. Jakobson puts a microscope on the agents of Chinese maritime policy, unearthing the details of their political ecosystem from dozens of texts and interviews with Chinese scholars and officials. Her research is a much needed corrective to simplistic views of China as a state able to identify an objective many years in advance and pursue it with anthropomorphic cunning.
Read the full story at The Diplomat