The 1AC’s notion of China as a threat that to beat in the tech race is a self-fulfilling prophesy---turns case

1. Introduction: Is the China Threat Real or Illusory? The concept of the “China threat” is not new; its history in the West is more than a century long. Initially, the implications of the term China threat were primarily cultural and social: the Chinese people and their traditions were portrayed by popular Western writers as malevolent, alien, and threatening to Western culture.1 This depiction remained in the Western imagination and later expanded to include the political realm, in which China was represented as brutal and belligerent, especially during the heyday of McCarthyism or the “Second Red Scare” following China’s regime change in 1949. 2 In recent decades, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, the so-called China threat has become a topical issue within contemporary international relations (IR).3 The concept has taken on a more prominent role in Western political discourse—especially, but not exclusively, in the United States—over the past two decades. It not only has been introduced into the public sphere by journalists and other opinion leaders, but has entered the domain of policy through the work of policy analysts and politicians.4 Those concerned by the China threat argue in essence that a rising China poses an increasing, imminent, and real threat both to its neighbors and to far-distant countries. Moreover, this threat is perceived to be comprehensive, with security-related, military, economic, and environmental implications. Naturally, this hotly debated topic has also received scholarly attention. Most researchers have taken either a positivist or a normative approach to the issue of the “China threat.” Positivist studies emphasize causal factors, whereas the aim of normative research is to refute or support a given thesis from a historical and ideological perspective. Both positivist and normative researchers provide theoretical and practical insights into the study of the alleged “China threat,” together with recommendations for dealing with it. Roy, one of the first scholars to address the issue of the China threat from an IR perspective,5 provides a survey of the major arguments on both sides of the debate, including a literature review of neorealist and neoclassical–realist theories of the threat posed by China and policy recommendations for Western governments. Notable original research on the China threat topic has continued to emerge over the years. Taking a more liberal approach, Li argues that the challenge posed by a fastgrowing China to stability in and beyond the Asia-Pacific region depends on the expectations of Chinese policy makers, who operate in a highly economically interdependent environment.6 They are more likely to use peaceful means to settle disputes with neighbors and others if they perceive economic benefits to arise from such a strategy. Other scholars use realist-IR theory (particularly power-transition theory) to contend that the so-called China threat has emerged in the political discourse of the United States and other Western countries in response to the rise of China.7 In another review article, Jeffery argues thought-provokingly for the danger of creating a real China threat through “historical analogies” with previous challenger states.8 For instance, power-transition theorists in the realist-IR school compare China’s threat with that of 19th-century Germany, and adherents of the successor state image theory draw analogies with the Soviet Union. Most of the Chinese scholars involved in this debate take a normative approach to the issue. They focus on two major questions: why the issue of the China threat exists and how to cope with it. Chen argues that from a legal and historical perspective, the China threat allegations made by U.S. politicians, defense officials, and academics are nothing but a reincarnation of the “yellow peril” conspiracy theory promulgated by Tsarist Russia and Wilhelmine Germany in the late 19th century.9 This view is echoed by Shi, who takes a postcolonial approach to interpreting the position of the China threat within Western discourse.10 More directly, Luo challenges the China threat thesis on the grounds that the nature of the international threat posed by China depends on its foreign policy strategy rather than on its growing power; as Chinese policy makers have exhibited little inclination to challenge international peace and stability, the China threat argument is unfounded.11 In terms of policy recommendations, Chinese scholars such as Chen, Feng, and Jiang suggest that the Chinese government should win trust from other states by making its peace-loving foreign strategy clear and participating more actively in the international community.12 A few researchers diverge from the mainstream response to this issue. Oliver Turner, for example, highlights the ideational rather than material factors in the processes of representing the China threat complicit in the U.S.–China policy.13 He argues that the main purpose of these processes is to create a threatening Chinese identity, foreign to that of the United States, to trigger actions that reinforce the binary opposition between the two countries. Before Turner and in the same vein, Pan takes a poststructuralist discursive approach to interpreting the role of the China threat within the U.S. political discourse. He focuses on the “discursive construction of otherness” by which China is fashioned as a “threatening, absolute other” to the “US-led evolutionary scheme.”14 Much of Pan’s discussion of this issue is devoted to real policy implications, namely the risk that considering “theory as practice” in U.S. policy will give rise to a real “China threat.”15 He further expands his scope of enquiry by deconstructing the Western representation of China’s rise. To him, dominant Western perceptions of China’s rise tell us less about China and more about Western self-imagination and its desire for certainty. The present research takes an additional step in its approach to the West’s China threat discourse by drawing on poststructuralist securitization theory. The primary focus of this study, like that of similar existing research, is not to determine whether the so-called China threat is real, but to examine the articulation and performance of the China threat discourse in the West. In comparison with previous similar research, however, this study takes a more explicit and sophisticated poststructuralist approach that distinguishes itself from related approaches with which it is often confused, particularly social constructivism. The special contribution of this study lies in its identification of several major methods of securitization by which the China threat is fashioned in Western discourse. It mainly argues that different securitizers perform the China threat acts in their respective discourse communities. These acts aim to inspire various issues of the China threat thesis through communication, despite pointing to different referential objects, focusing on different target audiences and referring to different social spheres. The article proceeds as follows. The next section presents the poststructuralist securitization framework used to analyze the concept of the “China threat,” followed by one section on each of the three modes of securitization identified: scientific, normative, and mythical. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings. 2. A Poststructuralist Securitization Analysis According to poststructuralist IR theory, which offers an alternative to mainstream positivist theories of international politics, “every discussion and everyday understanding of international politics depends upon abstraction, representation and interpretation.” 16 This assertion challenges the ontological foundations of positivism on the grounds that “the world” (in Foucault’s sense of the word) does not present itself to us in the form of ready-made categories, theories, or statements.17 Arguably, therefore, identity itself is problematized by its systematic dissociation at the ontological level. Following this reasoning, poststructuralists warn that people should “avoid substituting causes for effects.”18 In other words, poststructuralism does not treat identity or agency as given, but seeks to account for the forces that underwrite apparent sources of identity or agency. In a nutshell, identity is an effect to be interpreted, not assumed. In epistemological terms, accordingly, the poststructuralist IR approach challenges the conventional understanding of international issues by problematizing the given objects such as meaning, identity, and reality. Foucault makes it clear that poststructuralism has “an ethicopolitical purpose in problematising prevailing identity formations which appear normal or natural.”19 Poststructuralism rejects the very dichotomy of reality and narrative. Rather than a simple representation of some previous event, narrative is the means by which the status of reality is conferred on events. In a sense, the subject and the object are mutually constitutive. In this process, the knowledge and power nexus is crucial, as the power of particular discourses/knowledge materializes elements into comprehensible forms with political effects.20 Consequently, in adopting a poststructuralist approach, the present research does not join the debate on whether China poses a real threat, or the nature of that threat, but focuses on how the China threat has been discursively constructed and performed in the West. The presentation of the China threat discourse naturally draws the researcher’s attention to securitization theory, as the China threat is considered a typical example of “securitization.” Studies of the securitization process are designed to gain “an increasingly precise understanding of who securitises, on what issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what results and, not least, under what conditions (i.e., what explains when securitisation is successful).”21 According to this definition, securitization theory has two key components: the securitizing actor and the referent object.22 The former refers to an actor who securitizes an issue by “declaring a referent object existentially threatened.”23 The latter refers to the object perceived to be “existentially threatened” and at the same time to have “a legitimate claim to survive.”24 Securitization theory has several other important dimensions, including the subject (or audience). Securitization is not exclusively a poststructuralist domain, as it arises within other theoretical approaches, especially social constructivism. The relationship between poststructuralism and social constructivism is “complex and ambivalent.”25 The two theoretical systems are often confused because both poststructuralists and social constructivists challenge the mainstream positivist ontological and epistemological position of treating existential objects as given. Furthermore, “social constructivism” is a broad category encompassing a range of variants, some of which resemble poststructuralism in key respects.26 Despite these similarities, however, poststructuralism is distinct from socialconstructivist theory. Like other positivist theories, conventional constructivism is causal and explanatory, whereas poststructuralism is interpretative and postpositivist. For example, social constructivists emphasize the importance of reconstruction in identity formation, whereas poststructuralists highlight the “presence of deconstructive play.”27 Social constructivists are more interested in the normativity of linguistic construction, while poststructuralists value language for its “performativity”—that is, for the power of speech acts. To put it simply, poststructural securitization focuses on performative acts of language, whereas social constructivism focuses on language as a means of interaction. In IR, constructivist securitization theory holds that a securitizer must operate independently of a given context.28 In contrast, poststructuralist securitization theory addresses the issue of “external reality” as internal to discourse. Discourse is an important area of enquiry for poststructuralist securitization theorists in the field of IR. Poststructuralists regard discourse as “a specific series of representations and practices” and a process in which “meanings are produced,” “identities constituted,” “social relations established,” and “political and ethical outcomes made more or less possible.”29 In other words, discourses are defined by poststructuralists as “performative” in that they “constitute the objects of which they speak.”30 Discourse is regarded by poststructuralists as something that constitutes both subjects and objects, rather than something used by subjects to describe objects. Poststructuralist securitization theory is not simply a synthetic endeavor, combining poststructuralist approaches with securitization theory. Rather, it emerges from a careful reading of the seminal works of Barry Buzan and Ole Waever. Tracing the intellectual genealogy of Buzan and Waever’s securitization theory, Hansen reveals that a poststructuralist understanding of discourse is central to their theorization of security as a speech act. For instance, a security issue is constituted by “a self-referential practice.”31 Hansen makes another important contribution to the field by identifying three paths that link poststructuralism to the study of security: “structural incorporation,” “episteme terrain,” and “substantial modality.”32 “Structural incorporation” describes a broad context that no longer appears to be limited to “security.” However, it is within this broad context that the specific content of discursive formation is recruited to assign “security” to a given event, case, or process. There are three mechanisms of structural incorporation: “layered discursive structures” through broad concepts; the use of “macro-securitising discourses to structure other security discourses”; and “basic discourses derived from the representations and policy options that are available within a particular political field.”33 “Episteme terrain” refers to the arena “upon which securitisations are constituted.”34 Citing Buzan, Hansen suggests that successful speech acts require compliance with both the internal and the external conditions of the speech act. With regard to the internal conditions, securitizing actors must ensure that their securitizing acts have the correct grammar and plot structure and also conform to “the particular dialects of the different sectors.”35 The “external conditions” of a speech act are essential to the social capital and authority of the securitizing actor.36 Finally, “substantial modality” refers simply to “the social sphere” within which “a security issue is said to be situated.”37 Table 1: A Typology of the Major Modes of Securitization Mode of securitization Structural incorporation Episteme domain Substantial modality Way of reasoning Scientific theory Science Academics/elites Military/strategic Deductive Normative analogy Ideology The attentive public Political Inductive Political myth Culture/ civilization The general public Comprehensive Intuitive In the present research, the three specific modes outlined by Hansen are used to identify the various ways in which the China threat issue is discursively performed and to determine how this process relates to policy making. Language is an essential component of successful securitization, and is thus key to the formation and performance of the China threat discourse. However, language is deployed in various specific social situations, each associated with a distinct style, status, and register. A useful way of classifying social situations is domain analysis. In sociolinguistic terms, a domain is defined by three characteristics: place, role– relationship, and topic.38 A domain is a discourse community comprising a group of people who subscribe to the conventions that define a particular kind of language use. In practice, this communicative relationship is inseparable from, and always overlaps with, power relations wherein individuals’ actions are exercised upon other individuals.39 Each individual belongs to a different discourse community (or communities) within society, according to his or her education, status, ideological affiliation, and so on. Therefore, the success of a securitization act relies on the ability of an authoritative agent to deploy language that is appropriate to its audience in terms of both style and content. Therefore, securitization acts relating to the so-called China threat are effective only if the relevant authoritative agents perform in the correct discourse communities or domains. Authoritative agents may struggle to convey convincing and compelling interpretations of international issues in their securitization acts. Three major communities can be identified in human society, along a continuum from general to specific: the general public, the attentive public, and social elites. Each of these communities uses language and knowledge differently, and thus requires a particular securitization mode. As shown in Table 1, each of the three modes of securitization—scientific theory, normative analogy, and political myth—has a different logic and operates differently in terms of structural incorporation, episteme terrain, and substantial modality. It is worth noting that the three modes are ideal types that are not clear-cut, but overlapping. For example, although the scientific mode is dominated by the method of scientific theory, it may also be complemented by the methods of historical analogy and political myth. The following sections are devoted to detailed discussion of the three modes. Three classic texts are chosen to illustrate these modes, each performed by relevant authoritative agents of power in their respective domains of knowledge.