A U.S. scholar says policymakers are divided into five distinct—and sometimes competing—schools of thought on how to handle the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
David Shambaugh, 72, an award-winning author and professor of Asian Studies at George Washington University, is in Australia promoting his latest book, Breaking the Engagement: How China Won and Lost America.
Shambaugh’s research suggests that China’s economic rise and the CCP’s militarisation in recent years has divided the foreign policy community—on matters like how to perceive the CCP’s motives, but also in how the West should respond.
Shambaugh previously served in the U.S. Department of State and on the National Security Council during the Carter administration (1977- 1979)
1. The CCP a ‘Stealthy Rival’
One school of thought sees the CCP as a “stealthy rival.”
“The idea here is that China has a secret grand strategy to undermine, overtake, and replace the United States as the world’s principal power,” Shambaugh told the audience at the University of Sydney’s U.S. Studies Centre on June 26.
“For this school, all the dots connect in China’s domestic and global behaviour, and they point to a regime doing its best to undermine the United States and the international, global liberal order.”
