China’s rise is peaceful and they won’t displace the US.

The country’s geographic position is also unfavorable. Along its land and sea borders, China confronts distrustful neighbors. Among them are seven of the 15 most populous countries in the world (India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, and Vietnam) and five countries with which China has fought wars within the past 80 years (India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and Vietnam). None of China’s neighbors is culturally Chinese or ideologically aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. All may cooperate with China at various times and to varying degrees for strategic or economic reasons, but all seek to hedge against Chinese domination, often by cultivating relations with the United States. As Chinese behavior has become more assertive, this counterbalancing behavior is growing more evident. India has compromised its traditional strategic autonomy in order to participate in joint military exercises with Australia, Japan, and the United States as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad. Japan has taken the unprecedented step of officially declaring stability in the Taiwan Strait to be a national interest. And Australia has reaffirmed its U.S. alliance by accepting help in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement. China is unlikely to achieve anything like hegemony over any but the smallest of its neighbors.¶ Geography helps explain another Chinese weakness: its lack of allies other than North Korea. There are countries that are nearby enough to receive substantial help from China in the case of a military conflict, but they all fear China more than they fear any other state. The lack of allies is more a liability than an asset, for it deprives China of ways to multiply the pressure it can put on uncooperative neighbors and of the ability to position sizable military forces around the world. To be sure, none of the United States’ 60-some allies and partners has interests identical to Washington’s. None can be counted on to follow every component of U.S. strategy toward China. But U.S. alliances and partnerships still complicate China’s military calculations, increase the pressure on Beijing to comply with the international norms preferred by other states, and expand the alternatives available to countries considering whether to accept Chinese investments.¶ Nor is the structural distribution of international power favorable to Chinese global dominance. Barring catastrophic mismanagement by other states, China will continue to face five powerful rivals—India, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the European Union—in a multipolar system that is not going to disappear. A unipolar moment, if one ever really existed, cannot be re-created, not by the United States and certainly not by China.¶ THREAT PERCEPTION¶ The challenge the United States faces from China is bad enough without exaggerating it. As realism would predict, Beijing is dissatisfied with the status quo: it is closely hemmed in by Washington’s allies, partners, and military forces; its supply lines are vulnerable to U.S. interdiction; and its society is influenced by American culture. China wants to push the United States away from its shores and weaken its alliances, and this means a real chance of conflict, especially over Taiwan. I agree with Mearsheimer that if such a war occurred, it would probably be a limited war, albeit highly destructive and tragic. I also agree that it would have the potential—not a great one, but more than zero—to escalate to a nuclear exchange.¶ But Mearsheimer is wrong to describe China’s determination to gain control over Taiwan as either “emotional” or “expansionist,” because these descriptors make China sound irrationally aggressive. Mearsheimer’s own theory of realism better explains why Beijing will not lose its appetite for Taiwan, given the long-standing legal basis of its sovereignty claim and the island’s strategic, economic, and technological importance to Chinese security. Also consistent with realism is China’s preference for avoiding a premature strike on Taiwan and instead deterring Taiwanese independence as long as it takes to achieve what Beijing calls “peaceful reunification.” But deterring Taiwanese independence has meant that China has had to build up military assets capable of threatening the aircraft carriers and forward air and naval bases that the United States has long relied on to stave off any attempt to take Taiwan by force. The result: a U.S.-Chinese arms race that raises the risk of war through miscalculation.¶ And Mearsheimer is wrong to describe Beijing’s goal as global dominance. In a multipolar world, China will seek to shape global institutions to its advantage, just as major powers have always done. But it has no proposal for an alternative, Beijing-dominated set of institutions. It remains strongly committed to the global free-trade regime, as well as to the UN and that organization’s alphabet soup of agencies. It participates actively in the UN human rights system in order to help its allies and frustrate its rivals. Its Belt and Road Initiative operates alongside, rather than in place of, long-standing Western-funded development programs. China seeks influence, but it has little prospect of dominance as long as other powers also stay active in these institutions. ¶ Overestimating the China threat is just as dangerous as underestimating it. Hyping the hazard makes it harder to manage, by creating panic among both the American public and Chinese policymakers. Whether or not engagement was the mistake that Mearsheimer claims, whether or not there was ever an option to constrain China’s growth as he believes, we are where we are. I agree with Mearsheimer that what the United States must do now is manage the situation—which should mean not exacerbating what is already, on cold realist grounds, a serious challenge.