I was fortunate enough to get to attend Dave Lampton’s lecture at the JHU-APL Rethinking Seminar Series. I highly recommend watching or listening to Lampton’s full talk, as he discusses the three dimensions of Chinese power: might, money and minds.

Lamption repeatedly emphasized that internal security and stability represents the primary concern of Chinese leadership. He discussed both the increasing rate of internal protests and the tensions created by uneven economic growth. These themes led me to wonder, how would America respond if a real crisis struck China’s internal stability?

The precise mechansim - economic depression, rural-urban conflict sparking uncontrolled riots, etc - matters less than the consequences. What would happen to the US economy? How would Korea and Japan respond? Would outside attempts to help be viewed as imperialist attempst to exploit China’s vulnerability and meddle with its internal affairs (as has happened in the past when China was weak)? Would North Korea jump at the opportunity to spark another crisis while the world is distracted or would it be more worried with the short-term disruption of key supplies from China?

My working hypothesis is that the experience would demonstrate the extent to which it is in America’s interest that China remain stable and economically sound. As China struggled to hold the pieces together, the American challenge would be to find ways to help them that didn’t exacerbate the problem. This would lead to the need for closer collaboration between Chinese and American leadership. Negotiating this relationship would force the US to choose between attempting to contain China’s rise or channeling China’s rise. Whether or not it had a policy in place, American actions would have to broadly follow one of these two strategies.

All in all, I think it would make an excellent scenario for a crisis simulation. It would draw out some of the key strategic relationships between economics and security as well as the pivotal role of Sino-American relations in global security.