Culture is the root and foundation of strategy. Strategic thinking, in the process of its evolutionary history, flows into the mainstream of a country or nation’s culture.

- Lt Gen Li Jijun1

Introduction

The behaviour and conduct of a country and its people are deeply influenced by its lived experiences, history, culture, and geography. China boasts of one of the most ancient civilizations

in the world and has a rich culture deeply influenced by its history. The importance of culture to the people of China is amply evident from the quote above. Unsurprisingly, China’s strategic culture drew a lot of attention from western scholars probing cultural insights into Chinese strategic behaviour and its likely utility in predicting future choices.

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent dramatic growth of China provides a perfect recipe for another great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. Understanding Chinese strategic choices, therefore, is not only desirable but essential to engage with China for avoiding possible miscalculations and major catastrophes. This essay aims to understand the prevalent strategic culture of China and explore its utility in identifying future strategic choices likely to be adopted by the Chinese elites.

The article is divided into four sections. The first section will explain the concept of strategic culture and analyse its evolution since its inception in the mid-20th Century. The second section identifies certain challenges and risks in application of strategic culture to the field of security studies. After exploring various features of Chinese strategic culture, the author will argue in the third section that China possesses both strands of strategic culture, viz. realpolitik parabellum and pacifist Confucian-Mencian philosophies. The last section will verify this dual aspect of Chinese strategic culture through the analysis of two prominent tenets namely ‘shi’ strategy along with stability and a unified China. The author will argue that  strategic culture alone may not be the deterministic factor in identifying the strategic choices including security and use of military power, albeit playing a crucial role in identifying and discarding unlikely strategic choices.

Understanding Strategic Culture

The earliest studies of culture and its impact on behaviour can be traced to the mid-20th Century when sociologists and anthropologists probed the interdisciplinary fields of culture and political science.2 The concept of strategic culture originated from some similar concepts developed during the Second World War such as the ‘National Character,’ which the USA tried to assess about Axis powers.3 By combining the complicated noun of ‘culture’ with the difficult adjective of ‘strategy,’ the concept of strategic culture faced the herculean challenge of definitional clarity.

In his 1977 RAND Corporation report, Jack Snyder defined strategic culture in Soviet nuclear strategy as the “total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of a national strategic community have acquired through instruction or imitation and share about nuclear strategy.”4 Jack Snyder further argued that though there can be various strategic subcultures within the broader strategic culture, their fundamental outlook would be similar against an external actor (in this case the USA).5 Many scholars agree with the fact that this report of Snyder brought “scholarly attention to the (crucial) link between political and military culture and strategic choices.”6 This is considered as the first generation work in strategic culture despite its narrow scope involving two major powers and absence of clarity on the “actual source of a state’s strategic culture.”7 The second-generation work in strategic culture published in the 1980s, identified that there is a disconnect between a state’s strategic culture and its behaviour.8 Second-generation theorists such as Bradley Klein suggested that strategic culture served as a deception tool to broadcast the recognised version of a state’s strategic culture while secretly practising the real operational strategic culture.9

The third generation of works started emerging in the 1990s and was more rigorous in academic approach.10 However, it was Alastair Ian Johnston’s seminal work, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History that precipitated scholarly probes into the realms of strategic culture and security studies. While defining strategic culture, Alastair Johnston agrees with Snyder’s concept that strategic culture limits behavioural choices.11 Scobell further expanded on Johnston’s definition of strategic culture and identified the current purveyors of strategic culture as “(the) political and military elites and scholars.”12 After analysing the US’ strategic culture, Thomas Mahnken contended that strategic culture exists at three levels: national level, military level and the military service level.13 The fourth generation of works in strategic culture emerged in the late 2010s and its main proponents like Alan Bloomfield fielded the concept of multiple strategic sub-cultures within a state competing to gain prominence and influence the decision-making.14 In the context of this essay, the author will adopt the following definition of strategic culture as proposed by Johnston:-

Strategic culture is an integrated system of symbols (i.e. argumentation structures, languages, analogies, metaphors, etc.) that acts to establish pervasive and long-lasting grand strategic preferences by formulating concepts of the role and efficacy of military force in interstate political affairs, and by clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the strategic preferences seem uniquely realistic and efficacious.15

Challenges and Perils in Using Strategic Culture

The application of a strategic culture lens to the realm of international relations and security studies has numerous challenges and has drawn considerable criticism from dominant International Relations (IR) theorists such as Patrick Porter. Colin Gray cautions against 11 perils or pitfalls while undertaking cultural probes into a state’s security strategies.16 “Since all humans are encultured,” Gray observed that there is nothing like “noncultural space.”17 However, culture is not the only determinant in a state’s strategic choices and the strategic culture itself could evolve and modify based on the shocks experienced by the society.18 The strategic culture needs to be read in conjunction with the temporal frame when it was formed or evolved. The temporal issue brings about the challenging arguments of continuity Vs. evolution of strategic culture.19 Similarly, a typical challenge is identifying the institutions or people who are keepers and transmitters of strategic culture.20 In the words of Mahnken, this is particularly applicable in the case of China as “dealing with Chinese strategic culture involves disentangling how Chinese leaders portray themselves from how they act.”21

Porter echoes the sentiment of many realists that “by depicting culture as the driver of military history, the culture turn notion risks being politically naïve.”22 Additionally, the cultural approach cannot explain the pragmatism and dynamism in a war that transcends across cultures.23 Despite these challenges, strategic culture holds promise for a falsifiable explanation of the strategic choices made by a state’s elites. As William Mott and Jai Chang Kim noted “instead of either culture or rational choice, a strategic cultural approach is helpful and necessary for understanding Chinese use of force.”24 The essay has so far explored the concept of strategic culture, and its scholarly evolution through four generations and identified certain challenges in its application in the field of security studies. In the next section, the author will explore some of the key aspects of Chinese strategic culture and identify its relevance in China’s security strategy.

Synthesizing Chinese Strategic Culture and its Security Strategy

In the words of Johnston, “China is a good place to start for the study of strategic culture.”25 Through his analysis of the Seven Military Classics and the behavioural patterns of Ming Dynasty decision-makers (1368-1644), Johnston identified two strands of Chinese strategic culture. The first one termed hard realpolitik or parabellum strategic culture, has semblance to the Western concept of realism and preferred “offensive strategies over static defensive and accommodationist options” to deal with the enemy.26 The second strand coined by Johnston as the Confucian-Mencian strategic culture, has a pacifistic and non-expansionist view where conflict is avoidable through the “promotion of good government and the co-opting or enculturation of external threats.”27

However, Johnston concluded that the parabellum or realpolitik strategic culture was dominant during the Ming period and the Confucian-Mencian strand remained only symbolically. Johnston also argued that the “concept of absolute flexibility [attacking and defending according to opportunity]” in the application of parabellum strategic culture facilitated Ming strategists to adopt an outright offensive posture to sometimes defensive and accommodationist approaches, waiting for the strategic conditions to ripe.28 Through his work, Johnston proposed that China will remain a ‘cultural realist’ state where grand strategic choices and behaviours are influenced by its deep-rooted strategic culture.29 Despite its scholarly finesse and scrupulous methodology, Johnston’s work was not infallible and generated a lot of debate about the rationality of his conclusions on Chinese strategic culture. Other scholars like Ghiselli and Scobell identified some of those shortcomings and further developed Johnston’s work.

Ghiselli argued that Johnston’s conclusions were based on certain similar behavioural patterns exhibited by the elites and his assumption that the same prevailed through millennia.30 The lack of credible parameters to measure the continuity and failure to acknowledge the logic behind the evolution of strategic culture rendered Johnston’s work deterministic. According to Ghiselli, the evolution of a state’s strategic culture is dependent on how the elites selected and interpreted various cultural artefacts and their symbols which in turn would influence their behavioural patterns.31 Ghiselli contended that “it is implausible that different people at different moments interpret the same symbol in precisely the same way.”32 The interpretation of classical strategic texts can be elusive as rulers and military commanders often use parts of these texts to their advantage.33

In his analysis of texts, articles and doctrines published by the PLA and Chinese military scholars between 1992 and 2016, Ghiselli found that the Chinese strategic culture has evolved not only through revision, interpretation, and integration of old symbols, but also through the study and analysis of foreign military doctrines, especially in the field of technology.34 While China maintains a realist view towards foreign policy and security affairs, Ghiselli noted that “Chinese strategic culture encourages quick pre-emptive operations” as part of its military options when it is adopted as the last resort.35 Such a notion of ‘offensive defence’ can be compared to the ‘absolute flexibility’ mentioned earlier and has increasingly been considered as the evolved concept of Chinese strategic culture.

After an analysis of conflicts involving China since 1949, Scobell concluded that China essentially possesses both strands of strategic culture as proposed by Johnston. However, Scobell argued that the parabellum and Confucian-Mencian strands are both active simultaneously and they act in a “dialectic fashion to form a (distinctive) Chinese Cult of Defence.”36 The main argument of Scobell was that while practising the ‘Cult of Defence’ China has shown a predisposition to the use of force in a crisis.37

Scobell also identified ‘two faces’ of Chinese Strategic culture that other scholars failed to notice. The first face is about how Chinese strategists perceive their strategy and the second one is about how they perceive the strategic culture of a foreign country.38 According to Scobell, the Chinese strategists likened themselves to pacifist and defensive-minded people, which they have used to portray all Chinese conflicts as purely defensive in nature. This strategic culture narrative of a weak and defenceless China has also fed into the minds of the domestic audience, which provided Chinese elites with the much-required legitimacy for its military action under the garb of active defence including a pre-emptive strike. The second face of Chinese strategic culture perceives other states to be extremely aggressive and expansionist. Such a stereotypical view of other states’ strategic culture fuels a consistent threat perception and suspicions in dealings with other nations, especially where the military is involved.39 While western scholars like Johnston, Ghiselli and Scobell alluded to the underlying realist view of Chinese strategic culture, Chinese scholars like Tiejun Zhang perceive Chinese strategic culture to be predominantly pacifistic and defensive.

According to Zhang, Confucian ideology dominated traditional Chinese strategic culture where the Chinese heartland maintained tributary relations with its peripheries and adopted a non-violent approach to external aggression. While maintaining the traditional ethos of non-violence and harmony, Zhang argued that contemporary Chinese strategic culture is centred around ‘defensive realism’ where the use of force is justified in certain circumstances such as for the wellbeing of the people, as a purely defensive measure, and to achieve and maintain national unification.40 However, Zhang implicitly termed military campaigns of Han Chinese regimes as ‘active defence’ and reflected the realpolitik or parabellum view of Chinese strategic culture as pointed out by Western scholars earlier.

In this section, the author has identified various aspects of Chinese strategic culture. It was established that the Chinese strategists like to portray their culture as being pacifistic and defensive, while they have been practising a more pragmatic and parabellum strategic culture. The author also contended that strategic culture is not a permanent or fixed concept and has evolved to meet contemporary security challenges as is evident from the study of various scholars mentioned above. The next section will analyse the two most discernible articulations of Chinese strategic culture and ascertain their impact on China’s security strategy.

Strategic Culture in Practice

In praxis, there are various tenets or articulations of Chinese strategic culture such as the concept of shi, stable and unified China, Active Defence, winning without fighting or deception, secrecy and stratagem, etc. However, this author will analyse the two most prominent tenets namely shi as well as stable and unified China in this section to verify the prominence of the realpolitik strand of Chinese strategic culture.

According to Michael Pillsbury, a renowned US diplomat and Director for Chinese Strategy at Hudson Institute, shi remains “at the heart of Chinese strategy.”41 Western scholars have taken arduous efforts to understand the complex concept of shi and its manifestation in Chinese literature and practice. Shi can have various connotations ranging from the propensity of things and shaping of situations to nudging or eventuating.42 Mott and Kim argued that “Sun Tzu’s insights about shi have influenced Chinese strategic thought and use of force.”43 Based on his analysis of French Sinologist Francois Jullien’s study, Mahnken also established that the Chinese military continues to be influenced by shi.44

Shi strategy traces its origins to the earliest Confucian and Mencian principles of Tao which translates as ‘right or proper way of life’ or ‘harmony with nature.’ However, various Chinese strategists like Sun Tzu, Wu Tzu, Wei Liao Tzu, etc have developed the concept of a “coherent body of strategic thought” on statecraft and the use of force.45 The shi strategy focused on people and their intent as compared to the western focus on hard power or military capabilities while formulating strategies. Shi strategy promotes achievement of the ultimate goal, even if it is through the circuitous route while defeating the threat (also called Li), and is considered only as means to an end. The national shi strategy equates to modern national interests and aims at achieving political ends rather than a military victory. Shi strategy at the operational level aims to attack the enemy’s intent and deceive them instead of confrontation with the military forces. The study by Mott and Kim succinctly established that despite the millennial vintage of the concept, shi strategy is still preserved by the Chinese strategic community and was effectively utilised in all conflicts of the 20th Century. The authors argued that the “Chinese decision to initiate war focussed on ultimate shi (and) not on immediate li.46 The above analysis established that the Chinese shi strategy is influencing its offensive behaviour and is a prominent aspect of Chinese strategic culture.

Another crucial tenet of Chinese strategic culture is that of a stable and unified China. This tenet is identified by Mahnken as residing at the national level of strategic culture.47 Scobell sees it as one of the six principles that influenced decision-making by Chinese elites in his Cult of Defence.48 The Chinese hysteria for national unification and internal stability was deeply influenced by its chaotic history “marked by an ebb and flow between unity and fragmentation, centralisation and decentralisation,” as noted by Mahnken.49 The desire to achieve and maintain national unification was present throughout imperial history and the direct use of force to achieve this aim was considered righteous and justified.50 As Scobell pointed out, the Chinese ‘Cult of Defence’ considered all neighbours to be predators and inherent threats to Chinese sovereignty.51 According to the Chinese, internal weaknesses or instability exposed the country to external aggression or intervention. Subsequently, post-independence this aspect of strategic culture influenced the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to prioritise stability and unity of China above all and enabled the Chinese government to apply force to retain their mandate and maintain internal unity. The PLA also keeps national unity and freedom from external meddling as one of its important tasks.52

The practical application of this tenet of Chinese strategic culture can be assessed by the reaction of the Chinese government to internal resentments (student protests), social movements (Falungong) and domestic ethnic minority groups (Tibetans and Uighurs). The CCP not only kept strict control over these groups and parties but also used force (Tiananmen Square) to control and suppress them. The fact that people’s freedom and information including media are kept under strict control by the CCP reveals the continued hysteria of Chinese elites. Mahnken argued that this aspect of Chinese strategic culture would force Chinese scholars to “ascribe (such) interventionist motives to outside powers” undermining China’s foreign relations.53

The analysis of shi, stable and unified China tenets of Chinese strategic culture indicates that China maintains a realist worldview and is likely to have a predisposition towards realpolitik strategic culture when faced with the choice of military force. Though these tenets paint an alarmist picture, the strategic culture driving such tenets needs to be considered in the temporal and spatial context as it is not a fixed or isolated concept. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing economic turmoil since the global pandemic are likely to have profound impacts on Chinese strategic calculus.

Conclusion

This article analysed the concept of strategic culture and its evolution over the last four decades. Despite extensive scholarly attention and rigorous analysis, the field of strategic culture remains complex. The rich cultural heritage of China serves as the ideal ground for seeking insights into strategic culture-influenced decision-making. The article has also identified certain limitations and challenges in the application of strategic culture to the field of security studies.

While most Western scholars identify a realpolitik parabellum strategic culture, which encourages the use of force as and when the opportunity affords, Chinese strategists believe that they possess a pacifist defensive strategic culture. Through the analysis of various scholarly articles, this article establishes that China’s strategic culture has both strands of parabellum and Confucian-Mencian strategic cultures. Though, strategic culture facilitates the identification of certain preferred strategic choices by Chinese elites based on their history and culture, strategic culture alone may not be a deterministic factor in future strategic choices of these elites. Strategic culture at best would enable in identifying and discarding of those strategic choices that the Chinese elites would not adopt for a future security challenge. It is also equally important to acknowledge that Chinese strategic culture may not be a static monolithic concept. It may evolve based on strategic shocks experienced by society, who the keepers of these strategic cultures are as well as their selection and interpretation of cultural artefacts along with their symbols, while searching for solutions to new challenges in the future world.

Endnotes

  1. Lt Gen Li Jijun as quoted by Andrew Scobell, China and Strategic Culture (USA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002),1.

  2. Jeffrey Lantis, “Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism,” in Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction : Culturally Based Insights Into Comparative National Security Policymaking, eds. K Kartchner, J Johnson, and J Larsen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 34.

  3. Patrick Hinton, “Strategic Culture: In Defiance of a Structural World Order,” RUSI Journal vol. 165, no. 4 (2020), 80–87. doi:10.1080/03071847.2020.1816736.

  4. Jack L. Snyder, “The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations,” 01 September 1977, 8. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA046124, accessed 04 February 2022.

  5. Ibid., 10.

  6. Lantis, Op Cit., n. 2, 33.

  7. Hinton, Op Cit., n. 3, 82.

  8. Ibid., 82.

  9. Anand V, “Revisiting the Discourse on Strategic Culture: An Assessment of the Conceptual Debates,” Strategic Analysis vol. 44, no. 3(2020), 193 –207 . doi:10.1080/09700161.2020.1787684.

  10. Ibid., 197.

  11. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism : Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1995). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2423832&site=eds-live.

  12.  Scobell, Op Cit., n. 1.

  13.  Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner and Jeffrey A. Larsen, Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction : Culturally Based Insights Into Comparative National Security Policymaking (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 70.

  14. V, Op Cit., n. 9, 198.

  1. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11, 6.

  2. Johnson, Kartchner and Larsen, n. 13, 234-238.

  3. Johnson, Kartchner and Larsen, Op Cit., n. 13, 234.

  4. Johnson, Kartchner and Larsen, Op Cit., n. 13, 235-236.

  5. V, Op Cit., n. 9.

  6. Thomas Mahnken, Secrecy & Stratagem: Understanding Chinese Strategic Culture (Double Bay NSW: The Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2011), 6. www.lowyinstitute.org, accessed 07 February 2022.

  7. Ibid., 6.

  8. Patrick Porter, “Good Anthropology, Bad History: The Cultural Turn in Studying War,” Parameters vol. 37, no. 2 (2007), 45–58. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/good-anthropology-bad-history-cultural-turn/docview/198049222/se-2?accountid=45677, accessed 07 February 2022.

  9. Ibid.

  10. William Mott IV and Jae Chang Kim, The Philosophy of Chinese Military Culture Shih Vs Li (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 8.

  11. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11.

  12. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11, 248-265.

  13. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11.

  14. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11.

  15. Johnston, Op Cit., n. 11.

  16. Andrea Ghiselli, “Revising China’s Strategic Culture: Contemporary Cherry-Picking of Ancient Strategic Thought,” The China Quarterly no. 233 (2018, March), 166–85. doi:10.1017/S0305741018 000413.

  17. Ghiselli, Op Cit., n. 30, 168.

  18. Ghiselli, Op Cit., n. 30, 173.

  19. Porter, Op Cit., n. 22.

  20. Ghiselli, Op Cit., n. 30.

  21. Ghiselli, Op Cit., n. 30.

  22. Scobell, Op Cit., n. 2

  23. Andrew Scobell, “China’s Real Strategic Culture: A Great Wall of the Imagination,” Contemporary Security Policy 35, no. 2 (2014), 211–226, doi:10.1080/13523260.2014.927677.

  24. Scobell, Op Cit., n. 2.

  25. Scobell, Op Cit., n. 37.

  26. Tiejun Zhang, “Comparative Strategy Chinese Strategic Culture: Traditional and Present Features, 2010, doi:10.1080/01495930290043056.

  27. Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015), 42-51.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Mott and Kim, Op Cit., n. 24.

  30. Mahnken, Op Cit., n. 20.

  31. Mott and Kim, Op Cit., n. 24, 11.

  32. Mott and Kim, Op Cit., n. 24, 227.

  33. Mahnken, Op Cit., n. 20.

  34. Scobell, Op Cit., n. 37.

  35. Mahnken, Op Cit., n. 20.

  36. Zhang, Op Cit., n. 40.

  37. Scobell, Op Cit., n. 37.

  38. Mahnken, Op Cit., n. 20.

  39. Mahnken, Op Cit., n. 20.