Tianxia - China's Strategic Objective

While Mitt Romney targets Russia as the US' Public Enemy #1, China is slowly expanding its influence north of its border with the world's largest country:

"China's widening sphere of economic influence is already being felt on a local level in Russia, especially in areas close to the frontier, far from Moscow, where Chinese-made goods stock the shelves at local grocery stores and Russians make shopping trips to China for clothes and consumer goods."

Upset that the US wouldn't play his game his way, Stephen Harper has rushed into the comforting arms of China, who's starting with oil and through panda diplomacy, starting to look at our telecoms and water.

"Li Changchun is ranked No. 5 in the Chinese hierarchy, one of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, and the party’s propaganda chief. When he arrived in Ottawa Thursday, he met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The government of Canada had never announced the powerful official was coming."

While our leaders turn inwards, focusing in internecine national fighting, they seem to be looking at foreign players through the opaque lens of their domestic political fortunes in the frame of four-year cycles.  China, on the other hand, is playing a much broader game.

So, what are they up to?

In the last few decades, this hybrid strategy has coalesced into a "calculative" strategy--that is, a strategy calculated to protect China from external threats as it pursues its geopolitical ascent. The purpose of the calculative strategy is to allow China to continue to reform its economy and thereby acquire comprehensive national power without having to deal with the impediments and distractions of security competition.

China's strategy has fundamentally never wavered since the Zhou Dynasty.  To understand China's mind, understand the concept of Tianxia.  Then, read Sun-tzu.

Of course, China is one step behind where they need to be.  But that's a post for another day.