Executive Summary: U.S. administrations and officials are consistently caught flat-footed by the increasing assertiveness of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over disputed territories in the East China and South China Seas. This assertiveness is strident, yet controlled. Beijing’s objectives in the region, with respect to maritime issues in particular, have been apparent for several decades. While the United States is well aware of the PRC’s “talk and take” approach—speaking the language of negotiation while extending de facto control over disputed areas—U.S. policy has been tactical and responsive rather than strategic and preemptive, thus allowing China to control the pace and nature of escalation in executing talk and take.
This paper points out that the PRC’s increasing assertiveness in Asia’s maritime domains is not simply a “structural” inevitability caused by the reemergence of a powerful Chinese nation-state outside the American-led alliance system in Asia, a security order that has been in place since the end of World War II. Instead, the PRC is currently rising in the most benign and stable external environment that any Chinese dynasty has faced for several hundred years.
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