China’s Views on Escalation and Crisis Management and Implications for the United States

Abstract: China views tensions and competition with the West, especially the United States, as inevitable due to its rising economic and political power and conflicting strategic objectives, prompting the development of a deterrence strategy called “effective control” (youxiao kongzhi) to guide political and military decisions during crises. This strategy blends compellence, which seeks to influence another state's behavior, with classical deterrence aimed at preventing adversary actions, and is focused on minimizing the risk of war until conditions favor conflict. The People’s Liberation Army’s 2013 Military and Science Strategy identified deterrence, compellence, and crisis management as areas for scientific study, embedding the “effective control” doctrine—shaping the situation, controlling escalation, curbing war through scaled attacks, and ultimately winning outright conflict—into Chinese Communist Party and PLA thinking. In his presentation, Lyle Morris draws on recent research to highlight policy implications for the United States, emphasizing the importance of understanding China’s approach to “effective control” and the specific language it uses.

Lyle Morris is Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy and National Security at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Prior to joining ASPI, Lyle was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation leading projects on Chinese military modernization and Asia-Pacific security from 2011-2022. From 2019 to 2021, Morris served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as the Country Director for China, advising OSD on defense relations between the Department of Defense and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and on Indo-Pacific maritime security. He received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for his service. Before joining RAND, Lyle was the 2010–11 Next Generation Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and a research intern with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Lyle has lived and studied in Beijing, China for four years, where he studied Mandarin at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) at Tsinghua University and later worked at Dentsu Advertising and the China Economist Journal.

Technical Contact: Brad Roberts            
Event Manager: Katie Thomas, thomas94 [at] llnl.gov (thomas94[at]llnl[dot]gov)