568 { China’s Quest
Shortly after the US invasion of Iraq began, several analysts from China’s
top think tanks outlined their estimate of US purposes in Beijing Review. The
deputy director of the MFA research center saw two major objectives behind
the US attack: to oust Saddam Hussein and to “rebuild Iraq with a democratic
system” in order to diminish the Middle East’s production of terrorists and
“establish US oil hegemony.” One of the top Middle East analysts of the MFA
think tank found that the main US objective was to force Iraq into submis-
sion, and warned that Iran would be Washington’s next target. The director of
Tsinghua University’s Institute of Strategic Studies maintained that “oil is not
the only reason” the United States has attached Iraq. He continued;
The attack is based on the desire to keep the Middle East from being
dominated by an opponent and safeguard [US] oil interests in the
region. I believe that the major objective of the war is to topple the total-
itarian rule of Saddam and thus dominate the Middle East ... the United
States had decided to control the region first by attacking Iraq.^23
A commentary in the PLA newspaper Jiefangjun bao in September 2002
saw the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of a strategy “designed to dominate
all of Eurasia.” This was to be done by controlling the oil resources of the
Middle East:
Iraq’s oil will have a direct impact on the ... world economy for the next
30 years, and [will be] an important tool to decide whether the United
States can control the lifeline of the world economy. The United States
has always regarded oil as the lifeline of itself and the entire capitalist
world. If it can prop up a pro-U.S. government in Iraq, it can ensure un-
disturbed oil demand [sic] for a long time.^24
Control over Middle East oil together with control of sea transport routes
for oil from the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea littoral would allow the United
States to control Eurasia from Japan through the Middle East to NATO/
Europe, thus dominating “the entire world.” The author did not make the
point that China would thus be vulnerable to US power, but his readers would
have understood that.
The contrast between the clear anti-US hegemony perceptions of China’s
foreign policy analysts regarding the 2003 war and the not-so-anti-US hege-
mony policies of the PRC in the Security Council raises the question of how
to reconcile the two. One possibility is that articles in nonclassified foreign
policy discussions in China’s media are intended to mold the worldview of
China’s middle classes, instilling in that crucial readership a sense of national
vigilance against malevolent foreign powers, as a way of legitimizing the
CCP’s continuing one-party authoritarian rule. From this perspective, the
content of these journals does not reflect the thinking of China’s foreign pol-
icy decision makers at the very apex of the CCP state. Rather, it is essentially a