Is Taiwan only the first step for China's expansionist ambition? - Noah Smith is clueless about China (Part 5)

In the last installment of the “Noah Smith is clueless about China” series, I look at history and culture to explain that China does not have a warlike culture, placing significant restraints on whatever expansionist ambitions China might otherwise have harbored.

When I wrote the article, I was fully aware that many people could see it as too dense a history treatise, so I made sure to use a section to explain why something as “soft” as history really mattered here.

In this new article, I will be more “practical,” and I will look at some more immediate-term reasons why war and expansionism should be the last thing you should be worried about in China, and why, China sees reunification with Taiwan as the last step of China’s rejuvenation, not the first step towards global expansion. By the end, I will also address some questions posed to me in the last article.

#1 Lack of ideological mobilization for an unlimited expansionist war

To prepare for any potential conflict, ideology always comes first.

A nation’s “war machine” is not a literal machine. It’s a concerted effort made possible by millions and even tens of millions of commanders, soldiers, servicepeople, suppliers, and spies, drawn and selected from a population of hundreds of millions. These are all people. People need motivation and incentives to act. And for an effort as risky as war-making, the necessary motivation must be especially strong.

This is why when someone prepares for war, they have to articulate their ideas and mentally condition the population in non-subtle ways, so every average Joe or Wang can easily understand and sign up for it.

For those people who are as clueless as Noah Smith about China, they usually like to make reference to Nazi Germany in order to understand China. But they don’t mention that Adolf Hitler was quite articulate about his intentions decades before the Nazi Party took power. In Mein Kampf, he already very openly argued for the extermination of Jews and the expansion of Lebensraum in the East. In hindsight, the fatal error of Chamberlain and Daladier in Munich was not that they appeased Hitler but how they could appease such an ambitious man despite all his very clear intentions.

Now, what about China?

Come and spend a day, a week, or a month here and tell yourself: is there any trace of public messaging about Chinese people requiring some Lebensraum? I can see none. Our borders are more or less fixed. There isn’t even public messaging about taking back the India-sized lost land Russians took away.

Could it be that Xi Jinping is only hiding his true intentions, which he would only reveal at the last minute?

This is utter nonsense, unattached to how politics operate. How do you expect a nation to move into a new direction in a second, when there has been no mental conditioning and ideological cheering for it beforehand at all? Who is going to support a flip-flopping leader? It’s as if Adolf Hitler came to power on a platform of peace and love, yet suddenly, in 1939, he revealed the plan to annex entire Europe and kill all the Jews. Who will be his followers before that final moment of revelation? Will these followers loyally obey his orders after the about-face?

Instead of imagining something that doesn’t exist, it’s much wiser to pay attention to the ideological prep work that does exist: Xi incessantly talks about the “rejuvenation of Chinese civilization”, which means its rightful, historical place in the world: a strong nation worthy of respect (but who has never really dominated the world). There is also the talk about the eventual reunification of Taiwan, which will be a big part of the “rejuvenation”. (More on this later.) There is this idea that we are going through the tough waters of “changes unseen in a century”, referring to the seismic shift when the world shifts from a unipolar structure to a bipolar and even multi-polar one, and the need to safeguard against all kinds of security risks associated with such profound change.

All these ideas are wide open for you to see, but in no way can these clearly worded messaging be interpreted as “expansionism”.

#2 The low ROI of military conquest in the Information + Nuclear Age

Now, let’s talk about the impracticality of war.

The last world war happened in an era without information technology and without nuclear weapons.

Because it was pre-infotech, the most coveted resources were hard, physical resources such as oil, steel, and land. A lot of the motivation for German and Japanese expansionism could be attributed to the unquenchable thirst of resource-poor powers trying to grab a piece of resource-rich regions. For Nazi Germany, it was the Ukrainian farmlands and Caucasian oilfields. For Imperial Japan, it was Manchuria and the Dutch East Indies. (Because the US is such a resource-rich country, it didn’t have any real global ambition beyond the Western Hemisphere until the Japanese dragged them in at Pearl Harbor.)

And because it was pre-nuclear, wars between big powers were easily triggered.

Now, we live in an age of information technology, social media, mobile internet, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. The most valuable companies (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, etc.) in the world are all in these fields and can individually be worth more than the entire GDP of a country like Italy or France. The talents who are able to produce a product like an iPhone or ChatGPT (or DeepSeek) are way more important than “hard” resources. That’s not to say hard resources are no longer important. But as soon as a minimum level of strategic reserves can be ensured and as long as there is a constant flow of high-value-added products to trade with others, big powers can never be as hungry for hard resources as they were in the early 20th Century.

In such an era, people get to ask, what’s the point of territorial expansion? It only seems to have all the negative consequences (destroying trade, scaring away good talents) while the benefit is only some petty amount of hard resources that would be directly put under the control of the aggressor.

The “push effect” was much weaker, while the “pull effect” was exponentially strengthened by the Mutually Assured Destruction because of nuclear weapons. Even the Cold War, of which the Soviet Union was a main protagonist whose expansionist desire was way more aggressive than China ever was, did not trigger a hot war between superpowers. And even the Ukraine War, despite the fact it has been waged between NATO and Russia for 3 full years, didn’t spiral into an all-out war.

#3 What if an event like 9/11 also happens to China?

At the end of the last article, a subscriber commented:

Of course, even a peace-loving nation may feel the need to strengthen its military. But more pessimistically, even a peace-loving nation can be brought to war if they feel victimized (or are made to feel so).

Indeed, any nation under attack will want to, and will have to, retaliate. But there will be some key differences from the American experiences.

The US and China have very asymmetrical experiences of “being attacked.” In the US, since its founding, that experience almost entirely consists of 1) the 1812 Burning of Washington, 2) Pearl Harbor, and 3) 9/11. And that’s it.

In China, our history is all about being attacked by outside forces. There are too many cases of much bigger magnitude than Americans ever experienced in their homeland, and I hardly need to list them.

What it means is that our pain acceptance will be much stronger than that of Americans. So using an analogy from the US history to understand China’s possible war behaviors is already quite problematic.

Now, what if? What if some hijacked airplanes crashed into Lujiazui’s skyscrapers one day? How would a superpower like China respond?

First, we will take revenge. We will find the culprit, and in one way or another, we will track them down and kill them. We believe in the simple logic of “eyes for eyes”, and “杀人偿命 life for life”.

However, it is still unthinkable for us to occupy a whole country like Afghanistan as part of that effort, let alone initiate political reforms in Afghanistan with the hope of making Afghans look more like us. There would only be a singular focus to kill Osama bin Laden at all costs and nothing more. To make that happen, we might even consider bribing and co-opting the Taliban in the first place, not toppling them.

And, we will never, ever change focus midway and choose to attack Iraq, while letting bin Laden roam freely Pakistan’s mountains. No Chinese leader would ever be able to explain to their people why the Iraq War was remotely necessary. No Chinese parents would ever allow their children to sacrifice for this unnecessary war.

#4 China’s inability to go after “value-based” or “faith-based” wars

The indifference toward regime change is also a major guardrail against China from embarking on unnecessary wars, and it reflects a bigger topic that I will explain more in detail one day. (It’s already put into the Master Plan.) In short, China totally lacks a religious tradition like Judeo-Christian or Muslim cultures. There has rarely been a moment when we combine war-making efforts with religious fervor, like the Crusade.

War is war. We cannot imagine war as a great battle between good and evil. When we choose war, it is when we absolutely have to, not because we believe war-making itself can lead to some morally righteous end in itself. This is precisely why a war like the Iraq War would be unthinkable for the Chinese. Waging war on a remote country in the hope of deposing a dictator and “freeing” its people is mind-boggling and simply illogical for a typical Chinese brain.

This “lack of faith” can not only explain a smaller probability for us of starting a war but can also explain things like how we approach business and why we evolve into a political system as we do. Again, I will elaborate on this theme in the future. Stayed tuned.

Q&A from the last post

Question #1 If the Chinese are non-militaristic, why do they join the military? Are they drafted? If enlisted men join the PLA for job security, are they really willing to fight? Why is China building up its military so rapidly?

These questions are quite easy to answer. China does not have a “draft” system. But even a “peace-loving” nation will have a military, if just for self-defense.

For instance, Switzerland may be the most “peaceful” nation in the world’s history, but it also has a mandatory military system and a world-class military to back up that peace.

For China, with land mass size the 3rd largest in the world, bordering 14 countries, it is only natural to have a defense force that’s proportional to its economic power. Moreover, the Taiwan Question has not been resolved, and each generation of Chinese leadership will have to maintain and grow our military power to ensure that we have the capability to militarily take over the island if it becomes necessary.

A lot of anxiety, in this case, has been fanned by the media. In recent years, as soon as China publishes its growing defense budget, western media always sound as if we have some insidious ambitions of global conquest in mind, while in fact, our defense budget is only keeping pace with our economic strength. For instance, between 2014 and 2024, our defense budget grew roughly 76% to $231 billion, while our GDP also grew 79%. The main reason our military power seems to grow terrifyingly is because the speed of our economic growth is terrifying.

And even with such a “terrifying” speed, our total defense budget is dwarfed by that of the USA:

Question #2 Is it true that Mr. Xi must complete his life's work and must have military strength to prevent the West from interfering with the reunification?

I do have doubts about this. I mean, Xi will definitely want to see reunification in his lifetime. He will work pretty hard towards the goal. If an opportunity presents itself, he will seize that moment. BUT, if circumstances don’t allow it, I don’t think he will bang his head and burn the world to achieve that. He is known to be flexible.

Fundamentally, I think Chinese leadership has some deep confidence that so long as China keeps on rising and the relative balance of power in the West Pacific keeps tilting toward China, this issue will be resolved one day.

I genuinely think (and hope) he is satisfied with at least ensuring China is on this path. After all, if there is one thing that’s the core ideology of Xi, it’s the “rejuvenation of China”. Taiwan is part of that, but not the only part. If, in certain circumstances, reunification risks detailing the larger rejuvenation, he will back down.

But what do I know? I don’t sleep on the same pillow as Xi, so I may be wrong here. I am only spelling out what’s the most plausible scenario in my mind, given that we rarely have “achieve some personal glory at all costs” mentality in our national psyche.

Questions #3 On South China Sea and Border regions

Q: You have also proven that China has repeatedly moved into non-Han areas either self-protectively or because of a leader's love of glory. Thus, non-war-loving China has inflicted plenty of hurt on neighboring peoples. It is this that I fear— China seems to want to claim the South China Sea as its own. Since China does not need the South China Sea for its own security, why? Under the conditions of conventional warfare 100 years ago, it made sense for China to directly control border regions. This meant that an invading army had to march far much farther to reach your capital city. But now that the true threat to any nation is nuclear, why does China need to hang on to Xinjiang and Tibet, obviously against the will of the inhabitants?

Answer: These are very sensitive topics that I don’t think I am ready to answer fully yet. For now, here are some simple observations:

1. When it comes to territorial integrity, “need” is not as important as “should”. If a nation feels it’s entitled to a specific territory, it will not give it up even if there is not much practical need. Because why not? Isn’t that unfair for the party that’s giving up too?

2. What Chinese people imagine “China” to be is basically the majority of the land controlled by our last imperial dynasty, the Qing. In fact, today’s China has a legal claim to Qing’s non-Han lands. I talked about the “清室退位诏书Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor”, when it was explicitly written by the abdicating Emperor that the Republic of China (which later fled to Taiwan but was succeeded by the PRC in the mainland) “inherited the lands of all five major races—Manchu, Han, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan.”

3. Talking about giving away Xinjiang and Tibet is like giving away the USA to native Americans. Practically, there would be zero chance to separate these lands from China (which all have a substantial Han Chinese population living there as well). It would be high treason to advocate for such proposals. Only in the worst possible time - when China fell into chaos and was shredded to pieces - can this kind of separatism movement become even remotely realistic.

4. The South China Sea became a geopolitical hotspot because all nations surrounding it were quite “new.” None of them (with the exception of Republic of China a.k.a Taiwan), in their independent and modern political formations, is older than 80 years old. When they were founded, they didn’t negotiate the boundaries with each other. When they were equally poor and powerless, they would not mind this vagueness. But when at least one claimant becomes disproportionately strong, this becomes a problem. But I want to stress it’s a problem that’s not impossible to be resolved. I see all the conflicts over there as stemming from claimant nations wrestling to “negotiate” a final settlement in some distant future. Moreover, it’s also worth noting that when Xi presented China’s “4 red lines” - China’s non-negotiables - to Biden last November, the SCS was noticeably not part of it.

Here is also a further Q&A to this post