Why the China “hawk-dove” framing is an own goal; “autocracy competence” points the way

There is no intellectual justification for the West’s obsession with labeling China experts as “hawks” or “doves.” Rooted in Cold War binaries, it prevents viable policy and mirrors the very friend-enemy dichotomy liberal democracies claim to reject. An alternative framework—“autocracy competence”—combines the desire for cooperation with an awareness of systemic autocratic limitations.

Key takeaways:

The global China discourse has split into two camps. In the public debate, China “hawks” are accused of being alarmists, ideological, and seeking Cold War-style confrontation. Meanwhile, “doves” cast themselves as calm, evidence-based, and open to dialogue with China. Labels like these, however, are examples of overlearning from history. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a literal nuclear standoff, gave birth to the hawk-dove labels. While we are no longer reliving that moment, the binary still lingers, fueling unnecessary conflict and preventing critical, constructive China engagement.

In the 21st century, the relationship between China and the West is fundamentally different from the Cold War era and the former bloc confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. We are connected to China in multiple ways: politically, economically, socially and even culturally. Such strong ties between the East and the West did not exist between 1945 and 1990. Our problem is that we have not developed the language to account for the interweaving of our economies and societies. Instead, many discourse participants have recycled old metaphors that no longer account for today’s complexities. Ironically, the rigid hawk-dove dichotomy sometimes reproduces the very friend-enemy logic that liberal democracies claim to have overcome – a binary thinking more reminiscent of 20th-century totalitarian ideologies than of open, pluralistic debate.

I have seen in my own experience that some self-proclaimed “dovish” discourse participants behave as mirror-image ideologues when discussing how best to engage with China. They are reflexively pro-engagement, disregarding China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy, and sneering at critics of the regime from the West—an anti-dialogical irony. Hawks stand accused of being obsessed with China’s dark side and ignoring its positive aspects, such as its global leadership in renewable energy. However, practitioners who have lived in China rarely return with uniformly glowing accounts. Acknowledging the challenges does not make one a hawk, and noting the progress does not make one a dove.

My own views, once broadly pro-China engagement, have changed with General Secretary Xi Jinping’s hard-authoritarian turn. Between 2011 and 2014, I managed a major EU-China Civil Society Dialogue program and genuinely believed in people-to-people bridges. Experience since Xi’s hard-authoritarian turn has shown me the limits of open-ended engagement when one side systematically restricts civil society space. Between 2017 and 2018, I was the Principal Investigator for a Ford Foundation-funded project that monitored the impact of China’s draconian Overseas NGO Law on European non-profit organizations and their Chinese partners. We learned that open-ended dialogue and cooperation had become a thing of the past. Civil society trust networks had been replaced by centralized and strictly controlled party-state power hierarchies.

The self-referential nature of western China engagement has become evident to me over time: it treats dialogue as an end instead of a means. Under the banner of “pragmatism,” systemic autocratic hurdles, such as censorship and transnational repression, must be downplayed to sustain engagement. This typically forces Western actors to collaborate only with “official China” – party-controlled organizations and individuals operating under strict censorship. The flip side is that Western engagers can no longer choose their partners freely. Since Xi became the the party’s General Secretary in 2012, any kind of collaboration with representatives of “unofficial China” is no longer possible. These hard limits on China engagement are seldom acknowledged by the pro-engagement faction, possibly to avoid public scrutiny about the very real limits of such approaches. Overlearning from historical trauma can cause us to be blind to new information, which is exactly what the dovish dogma does today.

This is self-defeating. Instead, we need to engage in an evidence-based public debate on how best to respond to autocratic regimes like China’s. Pro-China engagement advocates face additional challenges, namely the Chinese party-state’s efforts to shape global discourse about China through carrots and sticks. We must grasp how the party deals with adversaries here. For all Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, the United Front approach—classifying outsiders as “friends”, “waverers,” or “enemies”—is a daily task. Thus, carrots and sticks shape our global discourse on China, with many participants following Beijing’s speech codes, whether consciously or unconsciously.

The CCP uses the rule of fear to intimidate critics of one-party rule, both at home and abroad. In turn, this has led to widespread self-censorship among individuals and institutions. It is the wider public who bears the costs: CCP policies and narratives are not sufficiently challenged; critiques of entanglement with autocratic China are rare and risky. Academic literature reveals that self-censorship normalizes authoritarian practices, silences critics, and corrodes open debate, which is paradoxical given the moralistic public posturing of pro-engagement proponents.

A way out is to develop what I call “autocracy competence”: the ability to understand better how authoritarian regimes defend their power domestically and abroad. It is important to understand how foreign actors and audiences are entangled in this process. “Autocracy competence” can also help us overcome the hawk-dove dichotomy and the largely self-referential discourse on China. It is possible to synthesize some insights from both camps here. As an example, proponents of the engagement camp are not at fault for seeking dialogue and cooperation. The problem is that they do not discuss the practical, legal, and political hurdles to making such engagement activities work for both parties. Thus, there is a need for greater honesty regarding the actual obstacles to open-ended dialogue with China.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi embodies such an honest approach towards China. While Western media often describe her clear statements on a possible Taiwan contingency as “provocative” (a framing Beijing welcomes), Takaichi should not be labelled a “China hawk.” In reality, Takaichi advocates stronger defense capabilities, closer alignment with the United States in the Indo-Pacific and a clear-eyed view of security threats from Beijing. Through the lens of “autocracy competence,” it becomes clear that she is not an ideologue but rather has a realistic view of the dangers posed by China’s increasingly aggressive military posture in the region. The fact that public opinion in Japan has shifted decisively towards a more critical view of China shows that Takaichi is well in line with public sentiment. This quiet but decisive shift in Japanese public opinion illustrates that autocracy competence is already taking root in practice.

It is also necessary to acknowledge super-complexity. There are competing, and to some degree, incompatible, demands at play in China’s engagement. The collaboration of basic research with China can, in theory, contribute to breakthroughs in the development of new technologies for civilian applications. But it can also result in dual-use technology used to suppress minorities, strengthen the modernization of China’s military and contribute to a deindustrialization of liberal democracies in Western countries. The precautionary principle should be applied here. It is best not to pursue projects in collaboration with China when the risks are medium or high. Such caution does not amount to vilifying China; instead, we follow the “do no harm” principle.

It will never be easy to engage an autocratic China. We need to be more honest about the inherent trade-offs when weighing opportunities and risks. What values and principles do we prioritize over others? Where are we veering into craven opportunism, and what amounts to a pragmatic solution? A robust public debate is necessary to find the right balance. However, we can only get actionable insights from this debate if we stop adopting outdated hawk-dove categories. China is a complex challenge that requires out-of-the-box thinking, not knee-jerk reactions, feeding a dysfunctional and moralistic Western debate on China.