China's Security Perceptions: Interests and Ambitions

China is more confident about its security environment than it has been at any time since the founding of the People's Republic (PRC). For the first time in its 44-year history, the PRC does not face a plausible external military threat to its heartland. By the end of the 1980s, fundamental changes in Soviet foreign and military policies dramatically reduced the likelihood of military conflict between China and the Soviet Union and set the stage for normalization of Sino-Soviet relations at the Deng-Gorbachev summit in May 1989. The U.S. is drawing down its regional military presence and the superpower military confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region has ended, with the possible exception of the unresolved competition in strategic nuclear weapons. China's international borders are now peaceful and the possibility of a conflict in Korea is considered extremely low. These developments have strengthened beyond Beijing's most optimistic expectations the prospects for maintaining a peaceful international environment to pursue economic modernization. Concern about China's security persists in Beijing, however, despite the demise of the Soviet threat and the absence of other likely military threats to China. The post-Cold War world is expected to be complicated and contradiction-ridden, with regional tensions and instability arising from ethnic and nationalist struggles threatening peace and development in many parts of the world. The future direction of Japan is viewed by Chinese researchers as uncertain, and many worry that Japan could emerge as a military and political threat to China in the next century. The Chinese