“It has been China’s dream for a century to become the world’s leading nation,” wrote Liu Mingfu, then a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, in his 2010 book The China Dream. After taking over as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi Jinping echoed the book’s language and one of its key themes—“the dream of a strong military”—repeatedly in speeches. This dream, he said, would be realized by 2049, a century after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The English translation of The China Dream was published in the United States in May, the same month that the Chinese government published a defense-policy white paper laying out an expanded role for the navy in the context of U.S.-China tensions over China’s construction of islands in disputed waters in the South China Sea. The U.S. government estimates that Beijing has created 2,000 acres of artificial land in the Spratly Islands, parts of which are also claimed by other nearby countries. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned over the weekend that China’s activity heightened the risk of conflict in the region; a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded that the construction was “legal, reasonable … and neither impacts nor targets any country.”
The United States has its China hawks, and Liu is essentially an America hawk within China. After the initial publication of Liu’s book, Phillip C. Saunders of the U.S. National Defense University called it a “sensationalist” tract “aimed at tapping into a profitable mass market ... rather than [promoting] political orthodoxy,” and the book appears to have put its publisher briefly at odds with the government. The Wall Street Journal reported that The China Dream “flew off the shelves but was pulled over concerns it could damage relations with the U.S.” In the Xi era, however, theJournal’s Jeremy Page spotted it in the “recommended books” section of a state-run bookstore. (Liu told Page he didn’t know whether Xi himself had read it, but said Xi’s “China Dream” speeches had sent “a strong message.”) 
 
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Liu is representative of a new class of pundits in China that former Financial Times Beijing bureau chief Geoff Dyer has compared to America’s “TV generals,” retired officers who opine on military matters in the media. “In the last few years,” Dyer wrote in his book The Contest of the Century, “something similar has happened in China. A small number of media-friendly members of the armed forces have begun to talk openly about military matters, including their mistrust of and distaste for the U.S. military and its policies in Asia. ... In some ways, Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu is the latest addition to their numbers.”
The colonel has now retired from the military, and the path to global dominance he laid out five years ago was a bit more flexible than Xi’s; Liu reckoned it might take China another five decades to replace the United States as world leader. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has called the book an example of a “triumphalist” strain in Chinese thinking, which argues that “no matter how much China commits itself to a ‘peaceful rise,’ conflict is inherent in U.S.-China relations.” Kissinger noted that the hawks’ vision of inevitable U.S.-China conflict hasn’t been endorsed by either the Chinese or the American governments, but that “if the assumptions of these views were applied by either side—and it would only take one side to make it unavoidable—China and the U.S. could easily fall into an escalating tension.”
What follows is a condensed excerpt of one Chinese hawk’s view of what the “China Age” will look like, and his roadmap for how China will get there. It outlines a vision of Chinese superiority informed by the experience of America’s own rise to superpower status and conduct as the world’s preeminent power. His descriptions are general, and his prescriptions vague, but he asserts that the Chinese century will be a democratic one. If this strikes Americans as incongruous given China’s domestic system, Liu’s contention is that America itself is only “half democratic”—electing its leaders at home but “autocratic in the world.” He continues: “Americans overrate themselves and evaluate themselves untruthfully by saying that they are a democratic country.” And it is China that in Liu’s view can provide the “checks and balances” against America necessary to “form a democratic world.”
—Kathy Gilsinan
The appearance of every champion nation begins a new era. The China Age, at its most basic, will be an age of prosperity. In [early Chinese revolutionary] Sun Yat-sen’s evaluation of the West’s conception of Yellow Peril, he said that in the future, China’s era would not be one of Yellow Peril, but of Yellow Favor. The China Age will not be one in which China threatens the world, it will be one in which China enriches the world.
China Must Learn From America
America’s GDP surpassed Great Britain’s in 1895 to become the world’s largest. [Editor’s note: OECD estimates show U.S. per-capita GDP overtaking that of the United Kingdom sometime in the 1890s.] But it was only after 1945, half a century after America’s GDP outpaced Great Britain’s, that the United States replaced Great Britain as world leader. China’s GDP is still smaller than America’s; it may take China 50 years to overtake America’s GDP and replace it as world leader. There is still no need for America to be nervous. China should not be in a rush to be a leader; it should allow America to keep the position until a time that is best for all sides.
Before China can take over as world leader in the 21st century, it will need half a century to work through three stages. The first will be catching up to America and actively taking a leading role where it can in the world; the second will be racing neck-and-neck with America, and leading the world as an equal partner with America; and the third stage will be guiding the world through exercising leadership and management in the world, and thereby becoming the world’s leading nation. China is already actively participating in leadership where it can, and moving toward becoming America’s equal. This stage will last for another 20 to 30 years.
In 1987, American history professor Paul Kennedy of Yale University researched the favorable and adverse conditions surrounding China’s rise. He pointed out that China was the poorest of the countries wishing to be a great power and occupied the worst strategic position. These, he said, were two adverse conditions that would limit China’s rise, but he also pointed out two favorable conditions: one was that China’s leaders had “an ambitious, coherent, and visionary strategy, one that could beat Moscow, Washington, and Tokyo, not to mention Western Europe”; the other was that “China would continue to develop economically, and could be a vastly different country within several decades.”
His analysis of China’s strategy was very accurate. China’s rise was, before all else, the rise of its strategy.
The Three Phases of Chinese Strategy
The grand strategy of 21st-century China has to answer three questions: What kind of a China should we build? What kind of an Asia should we build? And what kind of a world should we build?
What Kind of China Should Be Built?
Mao Zedong led the construction of a socialist China; Deng Xiaoping led the construction of a China built on socialism with Chinese characteristics. Both were strategic designs and systems for a different kind of China.
China’s rise and revival cannot be limited to a strictly economic rise, and China’s role as a great power cannot be limited to a major economic role. Those who think China’s rise is not an ideological and military rise, or who think China’s rise is just an economic rise, and that China is only rising to become an economic power or a GDP power, are making a strategic mistake. A rich nation without a strong military is an insecure power. A nation without technological innovation is a country that can’t produce a scientific rise, and in an era where the knowledge economy is the most productive force, it is a country that can’t be strong economically. If China limits its rise to purely economic goals, it will produce a hobbled global power, a kind of global power that doesn’t last. To create a nation like that would be equivalent to cutting short China’s rise and the revival of the Chinese people.
What Kind of Asia Should Be Built?
To lead the world, China first needs to lead Asia. More than half the world’s population lives in Asia, six of the world’s 10 largest countries [by population] are in Asia, and 30 percent of global exports originate in Asia. Kissinger believes that the global system is undergoing a fundamental change; the center of the world is moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific. One could say that Asia is the region with the most vitality and potential in the 21st century. The kind of Asia we build will be critical in deciding what kind of world we build. After the Second World War, Europeans’ strategic plans and designs for the continent were a success. The success of the European Union today is strong proof of that.
The era of the Warring States in Europe has come to a close. The conflict of the past has become an alliance, one that shows great strength and potential on the world stage. But Asia’s Warring States era has just begun, and today China, Japan, and India are acting out the Wars of the Three Kingdoms over the entire continent. In Asia, it’s not just one or two countries that want to control the continent’s destiny. India’s politicians declared long ago that the 21st century will belong to India. In answer to the question of what kind of Europe to build and how to build it, Europeans have already produced a grand European strategy, and putting that strategy into practice, they have produced remarkable achievements. Asia needs to look to the European Union for experience, but there is no possibility of copying the European model. The building of Asia will take Asian wisdom and innovation. And in the creation of Asian goals, an Asian model, Asian methods, and Asian strategies, China will serve a unique role.
What Kind of World Should Be Built?
What kind of a China does the world need, and what kind of a world does China need? These questions are closely linked. At its highest levels, China’s grand strategy is its overall, long-term design for the world. If China is to guide and lead the world, it needs to have a plan and a design for it.
The conclusion of the Cold War was a fantastic opportunity to create a better world order, but instead the United States embarked down the path of unilateralism and hegemony. Joseph Nye, [an] American political scientist and Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government professor, has argued that the principle of a world power is that it cannot just seek its own interests; it needs to seek methods that benefit its own interests as well as the interests of others. The ideal world power should have a wide view of its national interests. The ideal world power looks at the international system in a broader context, and rather than only serving its national interests, also serves other national interests. In this, China is more suited to lead the world and rebuild the world order than America.