China's rapid-force modernization is driving strategic events in East Asia. But China is no longer communist; nor does it represent the same kind of threat posed by the USSR when it possessed huge military power and stretched across Eurasia, threatening U.S. allies at both ends. Thus important differences exist today between China and the old USSR. American and Japanese policy must take account of these differences.
In the Soviet system, capitalism and socialism were at odds. Communist dogma held that socialism would eventually prevail, albeit only after huge collisions with capitalism. But the advent of nuclear weapons did away with the notion that war was inevitable. Thus Moscow came to believe that socialism would have to prevail by superior trickiness in the name of "peaceful coexistence."
Meanwhile, China, since the time of Deng Xiaoping, has eschewed the inefficient system of economic planning for mobilizing capital, thus unleashing the productive energies of its people. Now China is trying to square a circle. The development of free markets will inevitably generate demands for greater political freedoms. But the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of giving up Leninist control. That is the central dilemma facing policymakers in Beijing.