3. China as Territorial Empire

This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the 19^th-century-type territorial empire identity that present China inherited from the Maoist period. Due to regime continuity, Deng’s reforms did not put an end to China’s perceived vulnerability to external threats. Events ranging from the fall of communism in Eastern Europe to the American intervention in Iraq convinced the leadership in Beijing of the need to preserve and strengthen China’s military instruments, which could be done only through the maintenance of the territorial empire. To avoid a Sino-American clash in the Pacific, President Xi’s construction of a new, Chinese-led international order took the form of a projection of normative power targeting the Global South. But the US ‘pivot to Asia’ convinced him of the critical importance of the protective role played by the hard power-based territorial empire, whose expansion and actorness he intensified. Its concentration of sovereignty and territoriality is well illustrated by the over-securitization process associated with President Xi’s concept of comprehensive national security and China’s involvement in various territorial disputes. Subchapter 3.4 concludes the chapter by scrutinizing the geostrategic dimension of the confrontation between China the territorial empire and the increasingly coherent and effective ‘networked security architecture’ created by the US Indo-Pacific Strategy.