China’s assertive behavior along its maritime periphery continues to raise troubling questions about Beijing’s policymaking apparatus and how much control Chinese leaders can exert over the different actors involved. A growing number of studies, including a recently-released report from the Lowy Institute in Canberra, suggest Beijing is incapable of exerting control because of the variety of Chinese foreign policy actors from the central ministries to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to provincial government elements. Nuanced examinations of Chinese security policy are welcome—in part because such nuance invites policymakers to think more clearly about how best to execute China policy—but the pendulum may have swung too far from the outdated perceptions of a monolithic China. Beijing still exerts control (at the very least) the PLA, and this conventional deterrence provided by the military creates space for other Chinese actors to push the envelope in disputed areas.
In the early years of the Cold War, China watchers often viewed Chinese policymaking as a monolithic structure, capable of readily translating intention into action with little internal, bureaucratic friction. That view probably persisted longer at senior levels of foreign governments—for example, U.S. officials’ immediate reaction that the J-20 test in 2011 was related to the U.S. defense secretary’s visit—while analysts and scholars swung toward subtler interpretations based on the mechanics of how leaders got things done coordinating among the different stakeholders in the party and the state.
In the maritime arena, the modern incarnation of the control school, best represented in the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report entitled “Tailored Coercion: Competition and Risk in Maritime Asia,” bears little resemblance to the old belief of a monolithic China acting in lockstep with leadership intentions, despite critics’ claims to the contrary. The central premise underpinning the CNAS report is that Beijing is capable of internal signaling that changes the permissiveness of the policy environment for different players to take action. The sensitivity of nationalist issues does not affect Beijing’s ability to do so. As Jessica Chen Weiss documented in her book, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations, Beijing is more than capable of signaling directly and indirectly to domestic players what behavior is allowable in spite of nationalist sentiment. Admittedly, protestors and police are different than the bureaucracies, but the willingness and capability of Chinese leaders to intervene where nationalist sensitivities are most acute indicates that the multitude of policy players do not have carte blanche to act without restraint.
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