The China Challenge: Understanding Beijing’s Grand Strategy (Virtual)
What does China want, how does it intend to achieve it, and how should the United States respond? Understanding Beijing's ambitions, capabilities, and strategies is the key challenge facing U.S. diplomats and defense planners. This seminar will introduce students to China’s expanding goals and evolving strategies by studying one of the landmark texts in modern U.S.-China relations: Rush Doshi’s The Long Game. Delving into the public speeches and private papers of three generations of Chinese leaders, Doshi argues that Beijing is preparing to displace American leadership in not only Asia but across the globe. The seminar will challenge the participants to grapple with the Chinese grand strategy and to think seriously about how America should respond to this generational challenge. Students will examine and assess various policy ideas for how the United States can blunt China’s ambitions and uphold a free and open order in Asia.
The seminar is led by Eamonn Bellin, AHS Academic Programs and Editorial Associate, and the readings are selected to enable participants to meaningfully participate in question-driven discussions. You can learn more details about reading assignments and schedule below.
Not offered in the 2023-2024 Academic Year.
Syllabus/Schedule
I. Fear: What drives Beijing?
Date: Wednesday, September 21, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (ET)
Topics: Hegemony, Grand Strategy, Traumatic Trifecta
Reading: Doshi, Rush. The Long Game pp. 1-67.
II. Patience: “Hiding Capabilities and Biding time”
Date: Wednesday, October 5, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (ET)
Topics: Blunting strategy, sea denial, stalling and stake-holding
Reading: Doshi, The Long Game, pp. 68-158.
III. opportunity: “Actively Accomplish Something”
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (ET)
Topics: Building strategy, 2008 financial criss and its aftershocks, “Community of Common Destiny”
Reading: Doshi, The Long Game, pp. 159-207.
Iv. Expansion: geopolitics & economics
Date: Wednesday, November 2, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (ET)
Topics: Belt and Road Initiative, String of Pearls, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, blue water navy
Reading: Doshi, The Long Game, pp. 208-260.
v. power: “Great Change Unseen in a Century”
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. (ET)
Topics: Xi and the 2016 pivot, global strategic adjustment, American policy responses
Required Reading: Doshi, The Long Game, pp. 261-335.
Recommended Reading
Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping, Klaus Muhlhahn.
By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783, Michael Green.
A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, Aaron Friedberg.