This paper grapples with this question and concludes that war between the two can break out even tonight if certain conditions are met. However, for now, with China’s military not advanced enough, any war would have to be started by the US. And it so happens that the US actually has enough motives to engage China before it fully modernizes but cannot just do so from the blue. The US is thus trying to force China to give it the reason to justify a war to its increasingly war skeptical allies and domestic publics. The reasons why the two cannot fight for now range from interdependence, the fact that Taiwan has not declared independence yet and the fact that Sino-Japan relations do not boil beyond the Yasukuni rhetoric. It is also due to the fact that China is powerless and relies on the US for many things such as access to lucrative markets and technology. The characters and personalities of the leaders of the two countries are also partly the reason there is not enough bad-blood to sound the war cry yet.

1. SHANDONG UNIVERSITY
山东大学
School of Political Science and Public Administration
MASTERS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
TERM PAPER
Sino-US Relations in the 21st Century: Is a Sino-US War Possible?
Presented By
Bright Mhango (M2013071)
Presented To
Professor Zhu Guichang
(Sino-U.S Relations and American Foreign Policy)
December 2014
1

2. Sino-US Relations in the 21st Century: Is a Sino-US War Possible?
“If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the US and
China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for
war,” wrote American realist, John Mearsheimer, in his opening remarks of his argument that
‘China’s rise will not be peaceful at all1.’
Thucydides wrote that the Peloponnesian War was inspired by the fear which the rise of
Athens caused in an established Sparta. This has come to be known as the ‘Thucydides Trap’
where hostilities area likely to be sparked if a lesser power gains capabilities. Germany’s
rise while Britain dominated in the 19th Century resulted to war and where war did not
happen, when a lesser power rose, it took much adjusting in the dominant powers attitude,
otherwise it led to war2.
It is widely accepted that after the Cold war, the United States of America is the sole
hegemon but China is coming in hot, it is already surpassed the US as the biggest economy3
and its other capabilities are also being fine tuned with eyes on position umber one.
According the theory of international politics, ‘the mightiest states attempt to establish
hegemony in their own region while making sure that no rival great power dominates another
region. The ultimate goal of every great power is to maximise its share of world power and
eventually dominate the system,’ (Mearsheimer, 2005).
As per the theories cited above, the US should be in panic mode with the emergence of China
on the hegemon horizon. And the signs of panic are aplenty. The two are locked in covert and
overt rivalries from trade to soft power. The highest office in the US, the White House
actually announced that the US would ‘pivot to Asia,’ a move many describe as a reaction to
the rise of China. Valencia (2014) argues along this line saying: ‘[America’s] “pivot” has
made the region more unstable and a cockpit of contention between it and China.”
1 Mearsheimer, J (2005) “The Rise of China Will Not Be Peaceful at All” The Australian, November 18, 2005 retrieved from URL:
http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/P0014.pdf on 07/12/12.
2 Holmes, J (2013) Beware the "Thucydides Trap" Trap retrieved from URL: http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/beware-the-thucydides-trap-trap/ on 07/12/14.
3 Fox News (2014) China Surpasses US to Become World Largest Economy retrieved from URL: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/12/06/china-surpasses-us-to-
become-largest-world-economy/ on 07/12/14.
2

3. So, war? Can the two fight? There is no simple answer as war depends on so many factors
from the characters of politicians to mistakes of technicians/computers that can unwittingly
launch missiles or falsely detect incoming missiles. It also depends on what the future will
bring.
This paper grapples with this question and concludes that war between the two can break out
even tonight if certain conditions are met. However, for now, with China’s military not
advanced enough, any war would have to be started by the US. And it so happens that the US
actually has enough motives to engage China before it fully modernizes but cannot just do so
from the blue. The US is thus trying to force China to give it the reason to justify a war to its
increasingly war skeptical allies and domestic publics.
The reasons why the two cannot fight for now range from interdependence, the fact that
Taiwan has not declared independence yet and the fact that Sino-Japan relations do not boil
beyond the Yasukuni rhetoric. It is also due to the fact that China is powerless and relies on
the US for many things such as access to lucrative markets and technology. The characters
and personalities of the leaders of the two countries are also partly the reason there is not
enough bad-blood to sound the war cry yet.
Why China cannot fight the US
Military Disadvantage
First things first, the US is a nuclear power and has used them before and seriously
considered using them on China during the Korean War. No sane nation would just launch an
attack on a nuclear power without being properly suicidal.
China’s military is also just a fraction when compared to the US.’ The US has the biggest
defense budget than almost the rest of the world including China combined4. The US military
machine is also well experienced; it has almost constantly been at war somehow since
America abandoned isolationism. It is also armed with better hardware and software than the
Chinese army and is replete with a blue water navy that China only dreams of.
4 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) measures annual military spending for most of the world's armed countries. According to SIPRI, the
U.S. spent $618 billion on its military in 2013, more than three times the $171 billion budget of second place China. Retrieved from USA Today on 07/12/14 URL:
(http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/12/countries-spending-most-on-military/12491639/)
3

4. The alleged massacre of Chinese civilians by the Chinese military at the Tiananmen Square
at the start of the 90s saw China lambasted with arms embargo by many Western powers.
This has made China unable to procure high end war utensils from Western domains. This is
a big drawback to China and a good reason not to start a war with a powerful US.
To come to attack China, the US can just hop and launch from Japan, South Korea or Taiwan
while China has to pass the same countries, staunch US allies, to go to the US. The US also
protected by vast open seas while China is surrounded by nations such as Vietnam which can
easily sell out and happen not to like China too much.
Economic reasons
China is a predominantly exporting economy. If the US were to shut China out, the effects
would be tragic on China, whose government relies on good sales for legitimacy (Mcknight,
2013). Unless China discovers a race other than the West that can buy its massive outputs, it
has to respect the West, starting with the US which not only invests heavily in China but also
buys from it substantially.
American hegemony works for china, as Ikenberry writes, “Even China has incentives to
preserve and work within an American hub-and-spoke system [in East Asia] in the short and
medium term5.”
‘Pax-Americana’ is a good condition for the Chinese economy: free markets, including the
US itself and a secure and stable Asia. If the US were not to be present in West Asia or in the
waters around West Asia, there would be chaos and China would have to dig deeper to secure
the energy from the area that it so badly needs. The US can also use this energy security
guarantor status to simply block oil tankers going to China during a conflict and China would
feel the heat.
Moral and Ideological reasons
China, after the exit of one inward looking Mao Zedong, has opened up immensely and has
tried to adopt ‘international norms’ such as involvement in peace keeping and the cessation
5 Ikenberry, G.J (2004) American hegemony and East Asian order. Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 3. (p. 354)
4

5. of funding rebels. China has also vowed never to strike first using nuclear weapons and
constantly condemns the unilateral approach of the USA in dealing with its real or perceived
threats. To this end, China would not want to lose its decade’s old trademark of not attacking
first.6
Flashpoint management
For China, if Taiwan ever declares independence, it is a declaration of war in China’s book7.
If China attacks Taiwan the US is bound by treaty to protect the Island nation8. This is one of
the biggest issues in the relations between the two countries. The other flashpoints would be
a war between China and Japan or South Korea all of which have close alliances and pacts
with the USA.
China knows this, and it sticks to rhetoric when addressing the issues it has with these
nations. For example after China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over
the East China Sea in 2013, the US flew planes in the zone without notifying China and
China did not raise one finger9.
For China, the tactics on Taiwan and all the other flashpoints are reduced to rhetoric – for
now.
Why the USA cannot war with China.
The US has all the money and might to sustain and manage an attack on China, starting even
tomorrow. But it simply cannot. The obvious reason to start with is the fact that China is a
nuclear power. The US cannot just attack China without risking mass annihilation of lives on
American soil.
6 Whiting, A (1972) The Use of Force in Foreign Policy by the People's Republic of China - Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 402,
China in the World Today (Jul., 1972), pp. 55-66
7 Daily Mail (2014) China ex-general says force an option in 'Taiwan problem’ Retrieved from URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2864096/China-ex-
general-says-force-option-Taiwan-problem.html on 11/12/14
8 The act states that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable
Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities.” (Taiwan Relations Act: Public Law 96-8 96th Congress Sec. 4 under APPLICATION OF LAWS; INTERNATIONAL
AGREEMENTS)
9 Barnes, J and Page, J (2013) U.S. Sends B-52s on Mission to Challenge Chinese Claims retrieved from URL:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579221993719005178 on 12/12/14
5

6. Not enough reasons.
The US would love to see China return to a poor nation status and to continue lagging behind
the US. If it could, it could attack China, but there are simply no reasons to justify a war past
congress, the UN or other Western powers.
With China playing safe in the Taiwan and Japan issues, the rest of the sticky issues between
the two powers are trade conflicts and other issues in the low politics category. The US might
provoke China, but China will simply not take the bait. The bombing of the Chinese embassy
in Yugoslavia in 1999 might come in handy here, in China there was anger, but anger was all
that could be produced. The same pattern prevailed when a Chinese pilot was sent to his
death after his plane was clipped by a US plane hovering near Chinese airspace.
As Crowley (2014) argues, China and the US are not rivals as was China and the Soviet
Union, they do not tussle over any territory and China does not have same capabilities as the
US as the Soviet Union had, it is merely playing catch to the US.
Interdependence
The US has huge capital invested in China. China benefits from this as it keeps its population
employed and absorbs the technology while the US keeps the pollution away from American
cities and benefits from the low production costs in China. War would be devastating and the
US being a heavy capitalist nation, the business captains would not like to see business
halted and the billion-head-strong Chinese market lost. War against China would face heavy
lobbying.
The above scenario is what liberalists believe happens when nations become interdependent,
they believe that if two nations come to rely on each other enough, war is unlikely as it
becomes expensive to wage a war without the wager suffering as well10.
The US has got other bigger threats than China and needs China’s help. Whether it be North
Korea’s or Iran’s nuclear questions, progress can be heavily stalled if China decided to root
10 Keohane, R. O., Nye, J. S. (2004). Power and Interdependence (3rd Ed.). Beijing: Peking University Press.
6

7. or even arm those two nations with the mega-bombs. China is friends with both nations and a
veto holder at the Security Council, it is simply not to be attacked willy nilly.
The US is also seeing an increasing hostility in recent years from terror groups mainly with
roots and ranks in West Asia. To stem out terrorism, sea piracy, intellectual property piracy,
the two need to share notes and coordinate as global criminal groups become sophisticated.
It is not just terrorism, the US needs China in helping the global economic machine stay
afloat, as hostilities tend to skyrocket with failing economic indicators. In West Asia, from
which a tired and failed America under president Barrack Obama is trying hard to exist, the
entry of China with its energy demands ensures that the US can safely exit without the region
plunging into the usual anarchy that runs alongside stability.
Questions like climate change can also only be effectively answered if the two, who also
happen to be the biggest polluters, work together.
The current leaders of the two countries are also somewhat cool heads. Their affinity to war
is sharply different from say George Bush or Mao Zedong.
All this restrains the US from attacking China, one can argue.
So, does it mean the two are condemned to eternal peace and harmonious co-existence?
To go back to the question of whether the two big powers can war, the above only seem to be
the usual liberal and idealistic optimism. Unfortunately the world according to realism,
which the US overtly pursues, does not come with olive branches.
Morality, legality, interdependence, justification, philosophy and all manner of good reasons
for not fighting have been alluded to, albeit not fully, but the two powers can fight, if the
conditions were right and ripe.
War can be a product of an array of factors, from the role of individual leaders, like Hitler, to
the role of domestic policies, like the Falklands War and the role of the global system, where
for example blameless nations were found in the thick of bullets during the World Wars, just
for being part of the world.
7

8. Realism and the myth of interdependence
John Mearsheimer, a realist, predicts that there is a greater possibility of the U.S. and China
going to war in the future than there was of a Soviet-NATO general war during the Cold War.
(Keck, 2014)
In realism, states engage is self-help, they do not trust each other and they regard
interdependence as a weakness.
The fact that countries rely on each other actually means that it is possible to hurt the other
easily. The US can blockade Chinese oil and China can dump the US treasury bonds it holds,
for example. They both know this. It is why the US is doing all it could to fix its debt. China
is also cognizant of its navylessness and it is why it is investing in clean energy, exploring its
own and diversifying its sources, the recent big gas deal with Russia being the hallmark of
diversification11.
China can also create energy reserves to last the period of a blockade. If the reasons for war
are enough, there will be little considerations about where the oil will come from.
In as much as the two countries are interdependent, their interdependence cannot
immediately produce life and death situations if switched off. China can develop markets for
its goods elsewhere and America can invest elsewhere. China can grow her own corn and the
US can get cheap migrants to the factories it can set up at home, or it can simply move
investments to Vietnam or Indonesia or other eager developing nations.
The Nuclear Question
That both countries have nuclear weapons is no reason to declare peace, in the years that are
ahead a weapon would be developed that can reverse the threat of a nuclear attack.
Alternatively one of the two countries can deliver a good first strike and defend her land
well. This and all are all big possibilities, the US and China are regularly unveiling new
weapons - recently they showed each other that they are now capable of taking out satellites
in space.
11 Guo, A and Paton, J (2014) Russia, China Add to $400 Billion Gas Deal With Accord retrieved from URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-10/russia-china-
add-to-400-billion-gas-deal-with-accord.html on 11/12/14
8

9. Of Morality and Legality
As an illustration, the UN was not in agreement with the 2003 Iraq invasion by the US, but
the US went in anyway and justified it using its own security concerns. America has also
tortured killed, deposed governments and sponsored rebels. It is only moral to a realist if it is
good to her. And in the event that China needed to be decimated, it would not matter that
there are millions of people with Chinese descent In the USA just like the fact that Nagasaki
had humans did not matter when they dropped the atomic bomb at the height of the pre-cold
war aggression.
The same applies to China. Yes, it sings non-aggression and preaches non-interference, but it
is only because it is not there yet. When the time comes and it interests are threatened, a
different anthem will be coined.
On Legality, China has for example refused international arbitration on its U-Shaped sea
border dispute with the Philippines and that is just an indication of what ‘legal/ethical/moral’
means to a realist.
The UN and its courts would only standby if the US wanted to invade the UN itself after all
it is the US that gives the most money to the organization.
Not enough reasons?
Well for now there is not much reason for the two to take to the arena, but it is too early and
naïve to think this will stay constant. To this end, there are several scenarios which if they
happened, would see the two powers fight.
The Taiwan Question
With Chiang Kai-shek and all the old timers with links to the mainland now fading away into
a more assertive Taiwan, independence might be around the corner. It is hard for the
Taiwanese as even the US agrees that it is part of China, but what if the Taiwanese young
Turks decide to go the long haul and declare independence?
9

10. Whoever would be the leader of China would not like to go down into history as the guy that
lost Taiwan, and if individually he is a lover of flying bombs, war would only come quicker.
Taiwan would defend itself, but only just, with the new Chinese military better than that
which failed to take Taiwan when it had the chance. Enter the Taiwan Relations Act in the
United States.
If China attacked Taiwan, Washington would be compelled to go in and this would be despite
and in spite of all the interdependence and all the idealistic excuses stated earlier.
This is assuming this happened now, now when China is weaker militarily than the US and
now that the Taiwan question is still a passionate reference in the corridors in Beijing and
Washington.
To America, Taiwan is just what it needs to keep China sweaty and an important ingredient in
the so called pivot to Asia. For China, it is about pride. China would rather have a ceremonial
Taiwan ownership than lose it.
These things would change in the future; the new generation on the mainland would grow to
care less of Taiwan. The Taiwanese would get to be less strategic to the US and the
Taiwanese would get to fear leaving China which might be the economic ruler then. The
Americans might in the future repeal the Taiwan Relations Act or simply care less. These
possibilities are far from the horizon and as for now, Taiwan is an active volcano.
A Japanese Scene (East China Sea)
A war mongering Japan had to be deflowered and its military might clipped after the Second
World War the US signed a pact with Japan to offer it security and pressured it into
pacificism. If China attacks Japan over the disputed Islands in the China Sea, America has
indicated that that would mean war on the US too12.
The dispute over the Diaoyou/Senkaku Islands is only going to get hotter as China becomes
stronger and Japan also wants to be the Japan it once was. For China it is about pride,
12 Panda, A (2014) Obama: Senkakus Covered under US-Japan Security Treaty retrieved from URL: http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/obama-senkakus-covered-under-
us-japan-security-treaty/ on 12/12/14.
10

11. historical vengeance. But for both, the Islands might be sitting on energy reserves and are in
the waters rich with fish. This is in addition to being a good place to mount defensive
armaments to ward of invaders.
The Korean Peninsula Question
China is sympathetic to North Korea and the US rolls with South Korea. If North Korea
follows through with its usual threats and attacks the South, some analysts believe that would
trigger a Sino-US war13. But this question has to be taken with a pinch of salt as some
believe that North Korea is now more of an asset to the US and a pain to China with the
former seeing it as a good indirect way to keep China contained and the later sees its nuclear
capabilities as a threat to its growing dominance.
The conflict between the two Koreas is real and can erupt at any minute and this means that a
war between the two powers might just be as imminent. The key word is might.
The South China Sea flashpoint
China is locked into hot border disputes with nations on its southern front namely: Vietnam,
Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia. China insists the U-shaped chunk of sea that
goes terrifyingly closer to the other countries is its. The others protest, and the dispute has
always been simmering. It has come to the fore now with the discovery of energy reserves
there. Some have even dubbed the area the future of conflict14.
China has referred to the South China Sea as a core interest area and has already clashed with
Vietnam in 2014 with the vessels from the two countries ramming into each other and China
using water cannons on Vietnamese vessels.
The US was been seen training with the Philippine’s military while all this was going on and
Chuck Hagel who was the US Defense Secretary at the time warned those who violate the
territorial integrity of nations by “force, coercion and intimidation” against doing so. Hagel
13 Analysts like Robert Farley who argued as such in his article: ‘Asia's Greatest Fear: A U.S.-China War’ (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/asia-flames-us-china-war-
10621)
14 Robert Kaplan, “The South China Sea is the Future of Conflict, “Foreign Policy, (Sept/Oct 2011),
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/the_south_china_sea_is_the_future_of_conflict
11

12. also stated that “the United States will not look the other way when fundamental principles
of the international order are being challenged15.”
The South China sea is downplayed by some scholars like Brendan Taylor who believes that
the region lacks the material to spark a major war, but as he notes in his concluding remarks:
“a quarrel in a far-away country” that bears little obvious or immediate relevance to the
central dramas of the international politics of the day can still provide the spark which ignites
a war of epochal proportions16.”
And as with hegemons whose power is challenged, the US might be looking for a way to get
China to the battleground and this area might just prove a good place to start. After all if
China gains the territory in the South China Sea it will be able to block US aircraft carriers
and greatly hamper the Pivot’s mission. (Ralby, 2014).
Ralby is only adding what Thucydides spoke and what history has given. China is only
following the path the Athenians took and Sparta, the US, is afraid. War is likely17.
Miscalculation
Not to be played down, so much can go wrong with miscalculation especially in a scenario
where the two powers view each other based on old attitudes. Already there have been cases
where the two countries’ warship nearly collided in the China Sea, their planes have rammed
into each other before.
China also surfaced its submarine perilously close to a fleet of US ships, with such moves
and incidents, if coupled with rashly technicians or minds like George Bush who worships
the first strike, war could run loose with the flip of a finger.
15 Quoted from : Valencia, M (2014) China, U.S. moving closer to viewing war as inevitable
(http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/09/01/commentary/world-commentary/china-u-s-moving-closer-to-viewing-war-as-inevitable/)
16 Taylor, B (2014) The South China Sea is Not a Flashpoint, The Washington Quarterly 37:1 pp. 99–111 accessed from URL:
https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Taylor_PDF.pdf on 07/11/14
17 Professor Graham Allison of the Kennedy School at Harvard warned of the Thucydides Trap between China and the US as cited by Holmes, see: Holmes, J (2013)
Beware the "Thucydides Trap" Trap retrieved from URL: http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/beware-the-thucydides-trap-trap/ on 07/12/14.
12

13. The rest of the war is already on
Whether at the UN, or at the Olympics, whether it is in big business or in small business like
toys, bras, solar panels or corn, the two powers are already at war. If war is not just bombs
flying; if war is to include one country allegedly hacking into the other’s vital computers; if
war is also banning each other’s scientists at conferences or refusing to use another’s
computer hardware (banning of ZTE in the US) or software (Banning of Windows 8 in
China), then the two countries are already deep in battle.
In every sphere of interaction there is conflict between the two. The US accuses China of
fixing its currency to keep producing cheaply; China accuses the US of meddling in its
internal affairs and also picks on some trade issues such as the refusal to allow in corn from
the US which it suspected had been contaminated with genetically modified varieties.
Conclusion
While China cannot dare to spark a fight with the US now, the US has all that is needed to
fight and it also has enough motives to fight China. China is left with little room but to get
ready as Pillsbury (2014), put it: ‘Beijing believes that the United States is readying itself for
the possibility of a conflict with China — and that it [China] must prepare for that
eventuality.’
While the current atmosphere sees the leaders of the two countries (Xi and Obama)
seemingly playing cool, their militaries are said to be getting ready for war18. There are more
reasons not to fight, but these reasons majorly fall in the low politics category. The US
remains a realist nation that likes using hard power and if any of the flashpoints such as
Taiwan declaring independence or Japan setting up base near the disputed Islands in the East
China Sea and China attacks, it could bring the two big economies to war. The same thing
could happen if North Korea attacked South Korea or if China used a heavy hand against the
small nations in the South China Sea and the US sees it as against its interests.
18 Wingfield-Hayes, R (2014) Why is the US Navy practising for war with China? Retrieved from URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-29547621 on
12/12/14
13

14. War between the two depends on what the future will bring. It is not a clear-cut future. But
most importantly it depends on China. If China tries to use it hard power, the US will try to
use it as a pretext to attack, the good thing is China is avoiding this, but that could change
soon, with nationalism skyrocketing in China and its military capabilities being tweaked
every day.
Will the US and China fight? The answer is: ‘It depends.’
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Taiwan Relations Act: Public Law 96-8 96th Congress Sec. 4 under APPLICATION OF LAWS;
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