China’s economy is internationally interconnected

The argument

The argument is about incentives rather than intentions. China remains the largest manufacturing base in the world and is integral to the functioning of the international supply chain, and its future prosperity is directly linked with that role. A country whose wealth is generated by supplying the rest of the world is bound to the conditions that let it keep doing so: open shipping routes, functioning trading relationships, and customers willing to keep placing orders. Conflict would put those conditions at risk. Serious hostilities would disrupt the routes, the contracts and the confidence on which the manufacturing base depends, and much of what was lost would not simply return afterwards, since buyers forced to find alternative suppliers do not necessarily come back once the disruption ends. It would therefore not be in China's interest to allow a conflict that might jeopardise its industrial base — and on this reading the restraint that follows is structural rather than a matter of goodwill or temperament. The same logic operates inside the country, through groups whose position depends on the arrangement continuing. Aside from manufacturing, China also has a burgeoning middle class who aspire to high living standards, underwritten by the export economy and by access to imported goods, and a rich elite who enjoy the ability to invest their wealth abroad, which requires open financial channels and the continued welcome of other states. The aspirations of both these influential groups within China are tied to the continuation of open markets between China and the rest of the world. That gives the peaceful course a domestic constituency as well as an external rationale. A government whose most prosperous and influential citizens would bear immediate costs from confrontation faces pressure against it from within. China's rise will therefore be peaceful, because the interconnection that produced the rise also makes conflict self-defeating.

Premises

Counter-arguments

China's rise has been built on unfair and at times illegal economic practices, including espionage and the regular theft of intellectual property. The US President Donald Trump has regularly cited China as a 'currency manipulator', deliberately devaluing its currency to game the international trade system. These tensions have led to a trade war between China and the United States of America, as both parties have announced tariffs on each other’s goods. Some have speculated that this trade war is not simply the manifestation of a personal grudge by the US President, but a realisation among policy officials in America that there is room for only one economic super power in the world.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] China's economic position is precarious.