Democracies need broader resilience to deter China: U.S. expert

Taipei, July 7 (CNA) Democracies must move beyond a military-centered understanding of deterrence and build "comprehensive resilience" across society to counter China's growing global influence, American foreign policy expert Bonnie Glaser said Tuesday in Taipei.

"Comprehensive resilience is essential for effective, credible deterrence," Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific Program, said in her keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the China In The World (CITW) 2026 summit in Taipei.

She said Beijing's strategy under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) integrates military, economic, technological, informational, political and social capabilities, meaning democracies "must respond" by building comprehensive resilience across those same domains.

Beyond military deterrence

"For decades, deterrence was understood primarily in military terms. Of course, military deterrence remains indispensable, especially here in the Indo-Pacific," Glaser said, noting that peace in the region depends on "preserving a favorable military balance."

"But military strength alone is no longer sufficient," she said.

Citing the China Index, a project by the Taiwanese NGO Doublethink Lab, which organized the summit, Glaser said it measures China's influence in more than 100 countries and shows that Beijing's impact is weakest in the military domain, but strongest in foreign policy, technology, and the economy.

The data, she said, also showed that China's influence is expanding in roughly seven out of every 10 countries measured.

"In other words, even as Beijing continues to increase its military capabilities, China has made a strategic bet that it can achieve many of its objectives through non-military means," Glaser said.

Resilience as deterrence

Glaser argued that because Beijing has "broadened the battlespace," democracies must also broaden deterrence by strengthening resilience in areas "well beyond civil defense or even emergency preparedness."

Those areas include secure supply chains, independent media, technological innovation, cyber resilience, social cohesion, and strong international partnerships, she said.

"Together, these strengths create societies that are harder to intimidate, harder to manipulate, and harder to divide," Glaser said.

Resilience, she said, should not be understood only as the ability to absorb shocks, but as an active capacity to deny an adversary the "political, economic and informational effects" it seeks.

That kind of resilience can change Beijing's "strategic calculus before a crisis occurs," she said.

"When resilience changes the expected outcome of coercion, it becomes deterrence," Glaser said. "Military deterrence seeks to convince an adversary that aggression will fail. Societal resilience seeks to convince an adversary that coercion will fail."

Taiwan's experience

Glaser said Taiwan has long faced military intimidation, economic coercion, political warfare, and information manipulation from China.

Rather than simply enduring those pressures, Taiwan has developed "practical models of democratic resilience," she said, citing efforts across government and society to counter disinformation, improve transparency, and strengthen public participation.

"Taiwan has become a living laboratory for democratic resilience," Glaser said, adding that its experience matters not only because of its geography, "but because it has confronted early and intensively the challenges many other democracies are now only beginning to face."

"The rest of the democratic world increasingly looks to Taiwan not simply as a security challenge, but as a source of solutions," she added.

Now in its seventh edition, the three-day CITW summit has drawn more than 360 participants, including China experts and civil society representatives, for closed-door talks and workshops on Beijing's global influence and democratic resilience.