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A House of Cards American strategy toward China World Policy Journal, Fall, 1997 by Christopher Layne 1. In the American foreign and defense policy communities the conventional wisdom now holds that China will emerge as a true great power in the twenty-first century’s early decades. As one commentator has argued, “When historians one hundred years hence write about our time, they may well conclude that the most significant development was the emergence of a vigorous market economy—and army—in the most populous country in the world.” It is unsurprising, therefore, that American policymakers and analysts are beginning to focus on the strategic implications of China’s rise to great power status. 2. American thinking about China breaks down into two competing viewpoints. One school of thought views China as an imminent threat to U.S. interests in East Asia and holds that Washington therefore must contain China. Containment is primarily a geostrategic policy that would use American military power to rein in Chinas ambitions and compel Beijing to adhere to Washingtons rules of the game on such issues as arms control, weapons proliferation, trade, and human rights. And for some, containment means using U.S. influence to compel Beijing to accede to the liberalization of Chinas domestic political system. 3. The other school of thought holds that by engaging China - and by enmeshing it in the global economy and various multilateral institutional frameworks - Chinas rise to great power status can be managed and Beijing can be induced to behave responsibly in international politics. Engagement is predicated on the belief that, as Chinas contacts with the outside world multiply, its exposure to Western (that is, American) political and cultural values will result in evolutionary political change within China. Thus, containment is a strategy that gives more emphasis to the traditional tools of statecraft (economic leverage and, especially, military power), while engagement places