Review of "Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy For American Dominance"

Michael Sobolik’s new book Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy For American Dominance promotes an assertive approach to China policy focused on frustrating Beijing’s expansionism in its near abroad and across the world. Sobolik, who is a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, offers grandiloquent, often funny writing that lends confidence to his ideas, which are presented alongside biting criticism of the last three and a half decades of U.S. policy toward China. Sobolik describes Washington’s posture toward China since Tiananmen Square as naive, reactive, and unclear, based on a smokescreen of post-Cold War triumphalism and outdated beliefs about the end of history. Centrally, Sobolik argues that the United States should recognize the futility of encouraging China to liberalize and respond punitively to the PRC’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang; brainwashing of the Chinese people by censorship; international financial misconduct; and corrupt exploitative Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) activities.

According to Countering China’s Great Game, China’s ultimate aim is to align its civilizational superiority as the world’s Middle Kingdom (zhongguo) and its authoritative claim to all under heaven (tianxia). Successive Chinese empires and regimes, therefore, have undertaken varied projects to unify the empire and expand Chinese power abroad. The CCP’s variation on the theme is centered around the BRI. Due to chronic naivete about Beijing, Sobolik asserts, Washington has been too quick to discount the BRI’s potential to reshape the world, one example of the U.S. tendency to base strategy on the unsafe and unsophisticated assumption that China will inevitably fail in its expansionist efforts. The book makes a historical case for the permanence of China’s centuries-long strategic culture of imperialist pursuit, making the “game” that the United States and China are now playing a zero-sum competition for security and hegemony. Having resigned to a world in which there can be no true compromise, cooperation, compartmentalization, or trust in the world’s most important relationship, Sobolik argues that the United States should undertake a series of economic and political efforts to isolate Beijing from its growing sphere of influence and undermine the CCP’s authority. Sobolik’s proposed path forward is best characterized by what he calls prudent brinkmanship––what he concedes many others will perceive as destabilizing and dangerous brinkmanship. The cornerstones of his approach are: blunting Chinese imperialism by cracking down on financial misconduct and corruption, carrying out an assertive anti-PRC public diplomacy campaign globally, and testing Beijing’s red lines by frustrating BRI-related commerce and censorship within the PRC.

In some places, Sobolik’s criticisms would have had a bigger impact had he granted his detractors a stronger version of their own case. For example, proponents of liberal internationalism would push back against his simplifications of the theory underlying decades of attempts to integrate and modernize China in the global system, and when illustrating the extent to which people underestimate the legacy of Chinese imperialism, Sobolik quotes Elon Musk––who can generally be expected to say embarrassing things––rather than a more informed detractor. When Sobolik does take on the strongest of his contrarians, he marries harsh criticism of opposing scholarship with praise of its writers. For example, Francis Fukuyama is “brilliant,” but his theories are linked to a dangerous “fever” of “Pollyannaish” triumphalism in Washington. Perhaps Sobolik’s harshest words are reserved for the Biden administration’s China policy, which he believes to be guided by President Biden’s long-held, borderline eschatological views that a liberal international system has the potential to lead China to a modern destiny and that cooperation will benefit both the United States and China in the long run, eliminating the need for direct competition in the short run. With the exceptions of enhancing regional alliances and introducing the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, Sobolik finds no virtues in what he sees as the administration’s weak approach to China—a critique that likely undersells the president’s efforts to counter the PRC’s economic malpractice. Early on, the book runs through a laundry list of the administration’s blunders, with a sharp and convincing focus on U.S. failures to address and punish the PRC’s abuses in Xinjiang and insistence upon diplomatic cooperation in the face of Chinese aggression. Ultimately, the book presents the liberal internationalist vision of the early 2000s, marked by American triumphalism and integration of China into international institutions, and recent efforts toward managed rivalry with China as two iterations of the same naively optimistic policy which fails to recognize the immutable and extensive nature of Chinese misconduct.

In Sobolik’s own words, he is proposing a bold test of the PRC’s red lines, including measures to sever half of BRI-related commerce in Eurasia from the international banking system by blacklisting goods transported through Xinjiang in addition to direct U.S. interference with the PRC’s great firewall of online censorship and the government bodies that run it. All of this is to be carried out for the purpose of undermining the legitimacy of the CCP.  To use measures that could severely harm another power’s economy is risky. Xi Jinping’s reaction if the United States were to hamper China’s land trade with Europe would be uncertain. Sobolik concedes that his proposals are likely to materially impact China’s economy (an eventuality for which the United States should not apologize) and asserts that the likely outcome of increased competition is the CCP becoming distracted and focusing its resources internally. That is a possibility, but it is also possible that Sobolik’s approach would garner severe backlash, leading to interruptions or cessations in U.S.-China collaboration regarding climate change, the fentanyl crisis, and AI proliferation. Already, Beijing suspended talks on nuclear arms control, revealing the delicacy of the world’s most powerful diplomatic relationship. Fentanyl and climate change have already killed millions, and AI has unknown potential. It will take the world’s most powerful countries to stop the bleeding, and it would be an abnegation of moral authority for the United States to obstruct progress. In the worst case, Washington should not rule out the possibility that taking actions to dramatically alter the PRC’s BRI profits catalyzes heightened insecurity in Asia. Not only could Beijing increase gray zone and military pressure on U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, but the more hostile and noncommunicative the Washington-Beijing relationship becomes, the more likely inadvertent or accidental escalation becomes across the region. And, if the United States plays all its coercive cards against China in a hurry, there will be limited strategic space to react to China’s own increased antagonism in the future. Sobolik anticipates his critics by reminding readers that the United States and its allies are not obligated to accommodate Beijing's worst behaviors, which is compelling in principle. His book makes the convincing argument that a more confrontational U.S. approach to China would be justified based on the country’s antagonism and its human rights record, but a severed U.S.-China relationship could acutely challenge global efforts to solve transnational problems.

Countering China’s Great Game offers a bold, assertive path forward for U.S. policy. Michael Sobolik leaves no room for cooperation or compartmentalization, favoring an offensive strategy that would significantly alter U.S.-China relations in the economic, diplomatic, information, and cyber spaces. Whether his vision would violate America’s responsibility to properly address global challenges or even harm international security is the most important question for policymakers who read his book. Sobolik’s warnings about the still-extant potential of the BRI to damage international order; unwavering criticisms of the ways in which Washington’s recent diplomatic, legal, and economic policies have failed to address the PRC’s human rights abuses and the BRI’s role in legitimizing them; and his detailed breakdowns of the dangers the CCP has thrust upon the world through pandemic mismanagement and surveillance activities are the standout arguments of his book, making it a useful read for China watchers—hawks and doves alike.