When I say allies, I mean real allies, USA has NATO, S. Korea, Japan,etc. Russia has CSTO. Iran has Syria and Hezbollah…and somewhat Iraq. Saudi Arabia has the Peninsula Shield Force, Turkey and Azerbaijan have a mutual defense treaty, Australia has Anzus,etc,etc. China has…nothing?
China and Pakistan make the JF 17 fighter plane, they also make a tank of some type and perhaps some other things, but nonetheless I don’t think that they have a real alliance, it’s more of a business deal thing. Same thing with Russia, they are both (along with Pakistan) in the Shangai cooperation organization, but so is India, one of the main rivals of China. China is also in the BRICKS group…but so is India, again. China and USA are friendly and cooperate on N. Korea one day and the next day fight over South China Sea islands, human rights and so on. China finances infrastructure projects in Europe, particularly Balkans, but those countries are either in NATO or EU candidates. North Korea is a complicated relationship, they help them, but at the same time they don’t help them nearly as much as they could have if they wanted.
So…basically, what the hell?
I can understand that their main political idea is to cooperate with everyone and get out the most from it, but it’s one of the 2 or 3 strongest countries and yet it doesn’t have a single loyal ally that it helps, and a semi isolated small regional power like Iran has half of middle east under their influence. How and why?
There’s a longer and more complex answer to this, but the short answer is that for most of their very long history they didn’t want any and now that they’d like some their choices are limited. They have been busy making inroads in Africa and I believe in South America, but those are long term plays that don’t increase their global influence very much in the near term.
Another reason is that it would be hard to find a single neighbor that doesn’t have historical animosity towards the Chinese, as well as legitimate current beefs. China’s made a habit of demanding territory from neighbors, such as India, Vietnam, and Russia, two of whom are big powers in their own right. A third reason is lack of shared values. The US and NATO are democracies. The Communist bloc were Communist. The Arab League is Arab. No one in the region really looks at China’s form of government and wants to emulate it. The Vietnamese probably come closest, but those two nations fell out during the Cambodian civil war and even fought a border war over it. While their trade relations are cordial and I’m sure China would back Vietnam if Vietnam was threatened, I doubt Vietnam would be willing to send Vietnamese to die in a Chinese war in say, Korea or Taiwan. Much less oppose the Russians or the Indians.
China has long considered itself the Middle Kingdom, the Center of the World.
China may have been historically humiliated by foreign dominance and control for a century or three, but their dream has always been to rise back up to their ‘natural place’ as the center of the world around which everything orbits. The communist regimes over the last 30 years have played a brilliant slow game of being a low paying industrial state in order to build and grow their nation into a modern economy and the most powerful manufacturing state in the world.
And just now are we reaching a point where their power, technology and economy can threaten the USA for dominance. Which they are not doing by playing the same power projection and “stupidly put troops in every nation in the world” as we are, but by continuing to build their own strength, expand their territorial claims (South China Sea right now, but wait until they decide they want the Amur region “back” from Russia.) and nail them down (new fortified islands, military bases, etc).
They likely consider it inevitable that their nation, with over 4 times the population of the USA, will dominate the future.
I don’t think you’re totally wrong in your critique there, but I think he is right in that projecting military power has never been a Chinese ambition. What they want is much like what the Japanese wanted in the 20th century. An Asia where they are the unquestioned, dominant power. It’s not “opposing imperialism” either, though. A China that was just opposing imperialists wouldn’t have been so eager to snatch territory from neighbors. But I do think their designs are much more limited than the Soviets or the Nazis. They want security in a very dangerous neighborhood and they see being the toughest bully on the block as the best way to achieve that.
The present day China is a baby on the world stage. Mao deliberately looked inward to build up a sense of Chinese independence and cultural superiority because the century of foreign domination of the country, first by the European powers and America, then by Japan, had drained all its power. His methods were counterproductive and odious, and his successors learned from his mistakes and failures. China didn’t need allies in the traditional sense. It wasn’t at war with anyone, and kept its nose out of foreign conflicts. It needed internal prosperity, huge amounts of infrastructure, cities to move its people off farms and into industrial development, and good relations with every possible trading partner in the world, along with perceived defensive abilities that would keep the foreign powers from thinking they could take over again. The past three decades or so have been devoted to that one overarching goal.
Everybody who said you can’t plan a giant economy has been shown up. The progress has not been perfect or equal in every aspect, and signs of bubbles and collapse appear in a hundred areas, true. It hasn’t happened yet and growth has only slowed without depression or revolt. China transformed itself from a paper tiger to a true superpower.
Only true superpowers need to go out and get allies, because true superpowers like to meddle in everyone else’s affairs. The U.S. needs allies because it tries to police the entire world. No other country would think about doing this, so no other country needs the political alliances and structures that the U.S. finds critical.
China is pouring billions of dollars into Asian and African and Middle Eastern nations, the same nations that Europe and America had ruined and alienated in the 20th century. They may well become Chinese allies in the future. Assuming it needs them. Allies in the traditional sense may be obsolete in a globally interconnected world where borders don’t mean as much and wars of nations are less likely than police operations against terrorist groups.
I don’t know enough to speculate whether China is playing a smart game with new rules or simply blundering along making stuff up as they go. Probably some of both. As the U.S. discovered a long time ago, selling stuff everybody in the world wanted, like Coke, was a better foreign policy than nuclear bombs. China has figured that out.
Whether or not you can plan a giant economy depends on where you put the goalposts. Their first few plans didn’t do much but kill a lot of people. Their current plan is a little better, as it involves letting market forces work, but the country is still dirt poor by Western standards and doesn’t seem likely to catch up. They are 83rd in per capita GDP.
Chances are, China would be a TON richer if the Kuomintang had won the civil war.
Never is an awful long time. I can point to numerous examples in Chinese history of projecting power. Here’s a list from the 18th century for example, which led to some permanent expansions of Chinese territory in Central Asia.
That’s not power projection in the way we think of it in the west. Power projection is being able to rule the Pacific even though your country is located in the Atlantic(Britain), or being able to invade a country not adjacent to you. Most countries are capable of taking and holding territory near their borders. Power projection means being able to take and hold territory far from your borders. Like Britain taking the Falklands back from Argentina.
China possesses Xinjiang and Tibet the same way the USA possesses California and Hawaii. Conquer it, move your people in there, and then let your people out-vote the natives.
All of China’s neighbors are nervous, especially the ones with significant populations of Han immigrants.
Annexing territory on your borders is certainly a thing China has done and would still would like to do (eg with the Spratly islands, or that shitty glacier on the Indian border, or with Taiwan although yes that’s more complex), but that is not the same thing as gaining allies. In fact it is more likely to make other countries ally together against China.
Russia did project power well beyond its borders at times though, eg during the Napoleonic Wars and throughout Central Asia during the “great game” era; the Soviet Union projected power through allies or allied movements around the world, supported by Soviet aid of all kinds. We can argue about how powerful today’s Russia is, but it undeniably has less global reach than it used to.
The OP’s question, however, was “Why doesn’t China have more allies?”
Running off to dinner now but will post additional thoughts later.
You’re right, Russia didn’t do much power projection, and neither did Rome (depending on era) or Genghis Kahn. Empires that want to project power beyond bordering territories need significant maritime strength, and usually need allies (or controlled territories) in the area they want to project power.
Even on land, I have serious doubts that China could conquer large parts of Siberia, or conquer and hold India. Where China is unparalleled in the region is in fighting sharp border wars to teach their adversaries a lesson. And pretty much all the countries that border them are adversaries, which is why they have no allies.
“Allies” is a pretty outdated concept. Nobody goes to war anymore in defense of their allies, although the US probably would in the case of Israel. More often, when there is an international war, it is two allies against each other (UK/Argentina) or two non-allies against each other (Iran/Iraq). Allies now means most favored trading parners.
China has little concept of favored trading partners, they’ll trade with anybody who strikes a bargain under terms they’ll accept.
China’s current investments in Asia, the Pacific and Africa are to build civilian, economic and military infrastructure and are aimed at the projection of soft power. Because they adhere to collective international institutions [except when they are likely to actively oppose them such as in international rulings on the militarisation of disputed islands] nations that either vote for or abstain voting against them are as useful as any military allies. A small Pacific island nation has a large fishing territory footprint for example, which the Chinese can count on because they have built political support over decades of investment and nurturing political connections.
Currently, from an Australian perspective, where we are trying to be friendly with both the US and China, the differences in diplomatic style under Trump are stark, with the seeming abandonment of anything resembling tact and measured engagement on the one hand, and a very nuanced, long game of winning political support on the other. Its getting harder to be deputy sheriff [as a former Prime Minister described us] when the sheriff seems to have lost it.