By Shi Yinhong

July 12, 2016

"The basic logic of interaction between a rising power and an incumbent power is worth examination. Throughout human history, rising powers tend to benefit repeatedly from limited pushes, therefore they are prone to lack the willingness to reduce the momentum toward an ultimate conflict. Meanwhile, incumbent powers, with their strength in decline, tend to be forced to shrink, or in fact make limited concessions, but they may eventually find no more room for further concession and determine to fight. Rising powers are inclined to disregard or make light of what Karl Von Clausewitz called 'culminating point of victory', incumbent powers, on the other hand, are inclined to ignore or procrastinate defining 'bottom lines for concession'. Such a scenario may begin to emerge on the South China Sea issue.

China has an overall strategic environment and strategic tasks that are much bigger than the South China Sea issue. It should make its best effort to deliberate on and handle the South China Sea issue in the context of the country's overall strategic situation. In such a strategic situation, a matter of outstanding significance concerning Chinese foreign relations and diplomacy is, no matter how multifarious and complicated the reasons are, China's relations with neighboring countries have been less than desirable in recent years. At the same time, China-US relations, whose maintenance has cost the country dearly over the years, have also shown some frustrating, disappointing aspects. The two aspects have a lot to do with each other: The turbulences and negative upheavals in China-US ties derived largely from its periphery - the Korean Peninsula, Japan, particularly the South China Sea. China should proceed from the perspective of the strategic situation, make peace with neighboring countries, finally persuade and force the US to accept China’s role in Asia as well as its strategic status as a world power."

Read more:
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/china-in-the-face-of-south-china-sea-perspective-introspection-needed/

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