Are the Hawks Watching Closely? Reports on China’s Military Power for the US Congress, 2001–2021

Stekić, Nenad (2022) Are the Hawks Watching Closely? Reports on China’s Military Power for the US Congress, 2001–2021. The Review of International Affairs, LXXIII (1186). pp. 33-60. ISSN 0486-6096

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Abstract

This article presents the findings of a study that examined the Pentagon’s perception of China’s security and military affairs. Its goals are to explain the major trends and projections of how the United States views China’s security policy as part of the launch of its new Grand Strategy, as well as the patterns of US foreign policy response. The main unit of analysis is the report titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China”, which has been issued annually since 2001 by the Pentagon. In total, twenty-one reports submitted until 2021 are involved in the sample. The analytical process is split into several levels, aiming to get insights and highlight elements of Chinese growth as a major security threat to US global hegemony. The author uses the congruency comparison method to see whether the Pentagon’s perception of China’s security policy has evolved over time. The reports’ features were then qualitatively studied through a series of global security crises, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US military retreat from Afghanistan, military alignment in the Indo-Pacific, and regional security dynamics in the Arctic. The findings reveal that the Pentagon’s perspective on how China formulates its security policy agenda has shifted from a strategic to a more specific military dimension, along with China’s domestic potential concerns with Taiwan.

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