PerspectiveMapping the China Debate

Published 27 May 2020

The debate over U.S. foreign policy toward China is often reduced into the usual hawk-versus-dove metaphor. Hawks see U.S.-China great power competition as requiring a more aggressive posture, while doves worry about the downsides of an adversarial relationship. Ganesh Sitaraman writes that this dualist frame glosses over the fact that neither camp has a shared set of views. Rather, both hawks and doves contain a variety of subgroups—and some subgroups disagree with others on critical policy questions. “But without tractable categories for analysis, the debate over policy toward China is too often imprecise and confusing.”

The debate over U.S. foreign policy toward China is often reduced into the usual hawk-versus-dove metaphor. Hawks see U.S.-China great power competition as requiring a more aggressive posture, while doves worry about the downsides of an adversarial relationship. Ganesh Sitaraman writes in Lawfare that this dualist frame glosses over the fact that neither camp has a shared set of views. Rather, both hawks and doves contain a variety of subgroups—and some subgroups disagree with others on critical policy questions. “But without tractable categories for analysis, the debate over policy toward China is too often imprecise and confusing.”

To better understand the conversation on U.S. policy toward China, it’s helpful to outline the central perspectives with greater nuance. Of course, any attempt to do so isn’t going to be perfect. A given individual might have complex views that can’t be boiled down to a single set of concerns, or that could change from issue to issue. But mapping the different camps, even if the map is overly stylized, can help clarify the arguments in this debate, identify places where there are common or contrasting views, and suggest lines of inquiry or further probing where there are weaknesses in the arguments.

He writes that there are at least ten categories in the debate: four on the dovish side, and six on the hawkish side.

On the dovish side: neoliberal doves; leverage doves; transnational doves; and anti-war doves.

On the hawkish side: Liberal hawks; nationalist hawks; traditional hawks; leverage hawks; corporatist hawks; and resilience hawks.

Sitaraman concludes:

There is surely much more debate to come, and as foreign policymakers take stock of U.S. foreign policy toward China, they should look beyond the vagaries of hawk and dove. Unbundling these categories shows a variety of camps, with distinct positions that are at times in conflict and in other cases overlap. A more nuanced framing could help policymakers think through the critical decisions they have to make in the years ahead.