Thread by @ChengxinPan

The 'China's assertiveness' narrative in the early 2010s has been debunked by scholars such as Iain Johnston at Harvard and @bjornjerden at @ResearchUI in their excellent works. belfercenter.org/publication/ho…
academic.oup.com/cjip/article/7…
The quoted thread adds more weight to the research:

https://twitter.com/TheDailyMao/status/1316098768303841280

As far as I can see, the 'China's assertiveness' narrative (a gentler, easier-to-swallow version of the previous 'China threat' narrative) was designed to create fear (of China) and division in the region, fear and division which was largely absent there until roughly 2009-2010.

In 2000 China proposed a free trade area with ASEAN. Framework agreement was signed in 2002. Between 2003-2008, trade with ASEAN grew from US$59.6 billion to US$192.5 billion. One IPE expert noted at a 2007 conference that China hadn't gotten one step wrong in dealing with ASEAN.

In 2003 China famously announced its 'Peaceful Rise' (later quickly toned down to 'Peaceful Development' in order to calm nerves lest 'rise' seem too provocative). I argue that this was China's international contract: it promised peace in return for its opportunity to develop.

Since Deng's 'hide capacity bide time', China knew it could ill-afford to unsettle powerful but sensitive nerves. I argued in 2012 that since it's an unspoken contract, it would take two to tango. 'Peaceful Rise' is contingent on key interactions. academia.edu/1959053/_Peace…

This was Sino-Indian relations before the Quad and the 'Indo-Pacific': during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s 2005 visit to India, his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh posited that: ‘Together, India and China could reshape the world order’. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Japanese PM Yukio Hatoyama proposed East Asia Community in 2009, joining "the ranks of other Asian leaders who have envisioned a future of East Asian integration" from former PM Mahathir's East Asia Economic Caucus to Rudd's Asia Pacific Community. project2049.net/2009/10/16/hat…

So instead of fear and division, there was a momentum of regional integration. This has set off alarms among some US observers. Fukuyama ominously warned in 2005 that "Since 1945, East Asia has never had the internal cohesion or organization of Europe, with the latter's strong

multilateral institutions like the European Union and NATO. But this is beginning to change." If the US didn't pay attention, "long-term developments... will change the political landscape of Asia in ways that will ultimately weaken U.S. influence there." wsj.com/articles/SB110…

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer, who issued one of the earliest calls for containing China in 1995, also sensed the winds of change. He wrote in 2005, "By succeeding at denuclearizing Pyongyang, China can demonstrate that the road to getting things done in Asia runs through

Beijing. It will have shown its neighbors that the future lies in association with China, with or without the United States." washingtonpost.com/archive/opinio…

Such early warnings of China's growing influence in its own increasingly interconnected region foreshadowed a series of alarm bells sounded in the West, along the lines of A World without the West (2007), The Post-American World (2008), Power Shift (2010), Without America (2017).

At the time, other scholars believed that "Integrating China into the regional order has been a long-standing goal of ASEAN, Japan, and the United States. Now that this is occurring, the United States and China’s neighbors should welcome China’s place at the regional

table and the constructive role that Beijing is increasingly playing multilaterally in addressing regional challenges. If U.S. influence declines in Asia while China’s rises relatively in regional problem solving, it will more reflect researchgate.net/publication/23…

Washington’s aloofness than Beijing’s assertiveness" (David Shambaugh 2004). While the US was pre-occupied with its War on Terror in the Middle East in the 2000s, China was able to step up in a region where countries, after AFC, had other priorities than just counterterrorism.

A Malaysian lawyer and writer captured the sentiment really well " Making money was probably one of the most concrete signs of China's assertiveness (charm offensive) in the region. nytimes.com/2003/12/03/wor…

All this was part of the background to Obama's Pivot to Asia move (2011). An opportunity for the US arose in the South China Sea 2 years earlier. A UN deadline (May 2009) created among claimants “a moment for states to issue claims, counter-claims, and counter counter-claims.”

"... even though China appeared more assertive in submitting a map with the infamous nine-dashed line in its note to the UN, it has not defined its claims as
encompassing all the waters contained within those lines." taylorfravel.com/documents/rese…

In 2010 Hillary Clinton declared that the US “has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea”, thus "Opening a new source of potential friction with China." nytimes.com/2010/07/24/wor…

In her memoir Hard Choices, Clinton wrote that "That was a carefully chosen phrase, answering the earlier Chinese assertion that its expansive territorial claims in the area constituted a 'core interest'"

However, as Michael Swaine points out, the claim that China claimed the South China Sea to be a 'core interest' was unfounded. carnegieendowment.org/files/CLM34MS_…

Yet NYT's influential 'coverage' gave the US a reason to involve itself in the South China Sea. Clinton's remarks "marked not only the internationalisation of the South China Sea disputes, but also the opening of a potential new front in US-China rivalry." eastasiaforum.org/2011/05/24/is-…

Little did I know then that this new front is now a centre-stage in US-China rivalry, which has now taken on a life of its own. Mainstream representations of this very complex history in US-China relations make it simply a story of China's sudden aggressiveness in the region,

coupled with its 'broken promise' not to militarise the South China Sea. But it is important to put this history in perspective, and learn lessons from it. In great power politics, it's worth noting Newton's third law: For every action there is reaction.

https://twitter.com/FromCNwithloves/status/1316291273481809922

Sorry here is the quote of that Malaysian lawyer & writer: ''We've all got to live, we've all got to make money,'' said Mr. Raslan. ''The Chinese want to make money and so do we.''

To know why the US has such fear of regional integration, listen to Brzezinski: imperial geostrategy needs "to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

Speaking of disinformation, this narrative has to be one of its best examples. It appears credible partly because of dominant MSM which treat readers as half-illiberate with short memories, & partly because the narrative, by informing policy, creates self-fulfilling effects.

*half-illiterate