Assessing the Impact of Strategic Culture on Chinese Regional Security Policies in South Asia

Over the past 60 years, the Sino-Indian relationship has swung from a cool détente to all out war. Many Western international relations theorists applying the "realist" school of thought view China as a dangerous threat to not only the region but the world. Other experts, however, propose that China has more passive intentions and, using a strategic culture model, find these intentions to be made clear. Given these approaches, how can American policymakers best decipher Chinese security intentions towards India in order to create effective foreign policy? This monograph suggests that to understand Chinese intentions, it is beneficial to examine current leading Western international relations theories and their functional equivalence to the proposed strategic culture paradigms which purportedly influence China's strategic leaders. The theory with the most influence should seemingly dominate China's security policy decisions towards India. An assessment of these theories suggests that although China's current actions may look like challenges to India and the region, the dominant influence of the Confucian-Mencian tradition of Chinese strategic culture reveals the intent of China to maintain a hedging approach which seeks to not only build a strong and prosperous nation but also sustain regional harmony.