Download - Bruce Gilley China Rise Abstract
Why A Rising China Is Not Destabilizing World Order i. Introduction
In the mid to late-1990s, fears that a rising China would destabilize world order were
at their peak. Two journalists warned of a “coming conflict” with the United States1, while a
prominent scholar warned of a “struggle for mastery in Asia”2. At the time, those fears
seemed well-grounded. China had launched provocative missile tests simulating a blockade
of Taiwan in 1995 and 1996, and was aggressively building military facilities on the disputed
Mischief Reef coral formation 150 miles from the Philippines. Given China’s evident
economic recovery in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the combination of
rising power and ill-intent made global disruption seem only a matter of time.
Today, while prospectival concerns about a rising China remain, there is little
evidence that any major disruption to world order has occurred. Across three broad areas of
international affairs – trade, rights, and security – dominant international institutions and
norms remain unchanged by China’s growing power.
In this paper, I want to consider the reasons for this “peaceful rise” (heping jueqi), to
borrow the term officially coined in China.3 My purpose is to address the question in a
consciously theoretical manner from the standpoint of international relations theory. While
there have been significant new works on China’s recent foreign policy4, this does not
address the question of why China’s rise has been non-disruptive. To answer this question,
we need to consider competing approaches to the international system itself and how it
operates. As we will see, all three major paradigms of international relations – realist, liberal,
and constructivist – can generate theories that predict a peaceful rise. One can, in other
words, “tell a story” to explain China’s peaceful rise within any of these frameworks. This
leaves the precise explanation for the peaceful rise indeterminate, which implies that we do
not understand how China’s rise might become disruptive. Uncovering the precise
explanation requires considering which paradigmatic theory of peaceful rise most closely
approximates the actual mechanisms at work across the three issue-areas. In part, then, this
1 Bernstein and Munro 1997. 2 Friedberg 2000. 3 Xia and Jiang 2004. 4 See for example Johnston and Ross 2006; Shambaugh 2005.
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paper is an exercise in theoretical clarification, showing how the question of China’s peaceful
rise should be addressed.
The second aim is to get the answer right. I argue that realist, liberal, and
constructivist approaches all point to important factors that explain the outcome in question.
However, their relative importance varies. In particular, I argue that the constructivist
approach offers the most consistent and powerful insights into China’s peaceful rise because
it captures the normative accommodation that has driven the accommodation of institutions
and interests in the world system. China’s rise is peaceful, I argue, mainly because of a
mutually reinforcing and subjectively constructed confluence of foreign policy outputs and
systemic factors. Recent shifts in China’s domestic politics have re-oriented Chinese foreign
policy towards a more norm-sensitive role in the international system, while the response of
foreign powers and of the international system to China’s rise is to a large extent a result of
broader ideational factors that sustain the system itself, some wholly unrelated to China.
Taken together, these factors explain why countervailing tendencies consistent with realist
(power balancing, for instance) or liberal (foreign economic backlash, for instance)
paradigms have been so minimal, although they are not unimportant. China’s peaceful rise
thus represents a break with the central importance of realist and liberal paradigms that
explained the peaceful rise of Britain, the United States, or post-war Japan and Germany.
I begin this paper (Section ii) by tracing China’s rising power and then describe
(Section iii) its lack of disruptive influence on the international system thus far. I then show
(Section iv) that all three major paradigms of international relations can generate theories
that predict such an outcome. The heart of the paper (Section v) evaluates the relative merits
of the various predictive theories in light of the actual mechanisms at work. I conclude
(Section vi) with a consideration of the theoretical and policy implications that follow.
ii. China’s Rising Power
I assume in this paper that the values on both the independent and the dependent
variables in question are not highly contested. However, there is some debate about both –
whether China’s power is indeed rising and whether the outcome so far has been non-
disruption to the international system – and so it is worthwhile to briefly define and defend
these measurement claims.
2
I define rising power as the expansion of a state’s ability to influence the behavior of
other states and their societies, as well as the behavior, norms, and processes of international
institutions. A state’s power can be measured along both material (“hard”) and non-material
(“soft”) dimensions. China’s rising power was widely anticipated throughout the 20th century.
Purcell’s 1962 book on modern Chinese history was called The Rise of Modern China5, as was
Immanuel Hsu’s classic textbook on Chinese politics first issued in 1970.6 However, it was
only in the last decade of the 20th century, in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre,
that there was decisive evidence that China’s power was rising relative to that of other states.
The most obvious measure of this is its share of global output, which as Figure 1 shows,
began a sharp upturn following Tiananmen, and has rapidly closed in on that of the United
States in price-equivalent terms. It is possible to be cautious about the power implications of
this rise given China’s dependence on global markets, its low position in the global value-
added chain, or its poor human capital. 7 It is also possible to be skeptical about its
sustainability. However, even discounting for these concerns, China’s economically-driven
power rise is not much in doubt.
[Figure 1 about here]
Military spending is another rough, but useful, indicator of a country’s power.
China’s defense spending quadrupled between 1994 and 2007. At $104 billion in 2005,
according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, China’s defense spending was
more than the combined spending of the four next largest spenders in Asia (Japan, India,
South Korea and Australia) combined (see Figure 2). While precise comparisons with U.S.
military capabilities in Asia is difficult, there is no doubt that China is rapidly becoming a
military challenger to the United States in Asia.
[Figure 2 about here]
5 Purcell 1962. 6 Hsu 1970. 7 Breslin 2005; Chan 2005.
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Evidence of non-material or “soft” power is also abundant. To be sure, China’s
antidemocratic model of development, the so-called “Beijing Consensus”, enjoys a certain
normative appeal among some developing countries. But mostly China’s soft power is being
developed through cultural channels. The remarkable success of Beijing’s Confucius
Institutes program -- launched in 2004 and claiming 180 outlets in institutes of higher
education in 52 countries by mid-2007 -- is a testament to the receptivity to those efforts by
foreign societies because they are located in and co-sponsored by higher education
institutions in the host countries. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu
Jintao urged officials in 2007 to “enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country”
noting that culture had become “a factor of growing significance in the competition of
overall national strength.”8 China has gained significant goodwill in the Asian region in
particular. The editor-in-chief of Japan’s mass circulation Asahi Shimbum calls China’s annual
National Day receptions at its missions in Asia “the hottest political-social event in any
Asian country today” and a big contrast to the waning importance of July 4 receptions in the
region.9 The Beijing summit of China’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006
attracted 41 African heads of state or government, more than the 36 that attended the
African Union’s own summit in Khartoum the same year.10
The receptivity to Chinese influence is reflected in public opinion as well. In 2007,
the Pew Global Attitudes Project asked people whether they held favorable or unfavorable
attitudes towards both the U.S. and China. In 11 of 19 key countries, citizens had a more
favorable attitude towards China than the U.S. (see Figure 3).
[Figure 3 about here]
Beyond objective measures of China’s rising power, there is a subjective perception of
China’s rising power that is no less important. China is today widely perceived to be rising in
power by all relevant actors, whether states or societies. It is impossible to imagine any
8 Xinhua News Agency, 15 October 2007. 9 Funabashi 2007 38. 10 Author’s calculations based on official data.
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serious analyst today asking the question that Segal did in 1999 – “Does China Matter?” 11–
so widespread has this belief become. Major new histories of China’s expansions in the
Qin12, Tang13, and Qing14 dynasties portray it as a “natural” great power. A multi-year,
institutional research project called The China Balance Sheet, based in Washington D.C.,
seeks to understand “China’s emergence as an international power.”
multi-
15 Analysts in Asia in
particular take China’s rise as a given.16
Though some analysts have espied parallel processes of “Japan rising”17 or “India
rising”18, it is this subjective basis of its rising power that makes China different. Talk of a
rising China animates citizens and policy-makers, while talk of a rising Japan or India does
not. While it may be socially-constructed19, a rising China is no less true for all that.
iii. China’s Peaceful Rise
Simultaneous with the dramatic rise of China’s overall international power since the
mid-1990s has been what is largely a null set: the international system has not been
fundamentally, or indeed even moderately, affected by that rise. This itself is not an
uncontroversial claim. Since it is the outcome that this essay seeks to explain, it is worth
noting the evidence on which it is based.
Measuring disruption related to China’s rise is subject to significant validity and
reliability challenges, not to mention conceptual disagreements. Conceptually, disruption
would involve fundamental changes to the system of institutions, alliances, defense postures,
agreements, norms, and principles that guide world politics, either globally or, in this case,
within Asia itself. The major validity challenge to measuring disruption arises from the need
11 Segal, Buzan, and Foot 2004; Segal 1999. 12 Chang 2007. 13 Adshead 2004. 14 Perdue 2005. 15 “Overview”, The China Balance Sheet, www.chinabalancesheet.org, accessed 20 Sept 07. 16 Wang, Kokobun, and Nihon Kokusai Kåoryåu Sentåa. 2004. 17 Pyle 2007; Bunker and Ciccantell 2007. 18 Voll and Beierlein 2006; Das, Mathur, and Richter 2005; Schaffer 2002; Cohen 2002. 19 Brittingham 2007.
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to control for the influences of factors other than the rise of China. No one would ascribe
the formation of the East African Community in 1999, the turmoil in the Middle East since
9/11, or the formation of the International Criminal Court, for instance, to China’s rise. But
how much of India’s more advanced post-1998 nuclear posture to ascribe to China’s rise is
unclear. As to reliability, the major issue here is the possibility of prospectival change. A lack
of disruption relating to China’s rise may be transitory, an artifact of the U.S. over-
commitment in Iraq, for example, or of China’s temporary restraint of its revisionist foreign
policy aims. “Could” is the operative word here. Sutter, for example, warns that China’s non-
disruptive foreign policy, which he assumes is determinative of the non-disruptive outcome,
is “tentative and tactical” and “could…shift to different and perhaps more hard-line
positions” in future.20 The China Balance Sheet project warns that China’s growing power
“could form the basis for more assertive leadership to counterbalance the United States.”21
Keeping those caveats in mind, most evidence points to the conclusion that the
effects of China’s rise on the international system since the mid-1990s have been sustained
non-disruption. While in the first two decades of China’s reform movement – from around
1978 to around 2000 – there was notable evidence that a rising China was disrupting world
order22, in the decade since then much of that evidence has disappeared. While there has
been much talk of the emergence of “a new regional order”23 in Asia or even “a new global
20 Sutter 2005 292. 21 Bergsten 2006 14. 22 Key events included the launching of two sets of aggressive missile tests off the coast of
Taiwan in 1995-1996 and Beijing’s call in 2000 for a “new regional security order” in Asia.
Other state’s foreign policy events included India’s citing of China’s rising power as
justification for its 1998 nuclear tests, the U.S. interdiction and search of the Chinese ship
Yinhe for chemical weapons in 1993, and rising protectionist lobbies against Chinese goods
and security lobbies against Chinese spying in rich countries. International system events
included, inter alia, the spread of illegal Chinese emigration to Western countries symbolized
by the Golden Venture ship continaining 286 illegals that ran aground off New York in 1993,
and the ideological conflict over authoritarian “Asian Values”, of which China was said to be
a rising exemplar, that lasted until the 1997 Asian financial crisis. 23 Shambaugh 2005 23.
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order”24 as a result of China’s rise, evidence to support such claims is scant. To be sure, the
global distribution of power has shifted in China’s favor, as discussed above. But this itself
does not constitute evidence of systemic change, much less new regional or global orders.
Across three main issue-areas – economics, trade and development; human rights
and democracy; and national defense and international security – China’s rise has either
reinforced or not affected existing norms, institutions, and alignments. The World Trade
Organization, for example, which is the central institutions of global order in international
trade and investment, has emerged from China’s rise both strengthened and with its Western
dominance largely intact and unchallenged.25 The WTO has both accommodated China’s
inclusion and remained independent of its political influence. Expectations of a new North-
South confrontation arising from the inclusion of China have proven unfounded. As Fudan
University’s Wang notes, by buying into globalization so heartily, “China is providing, rather
than destabilizing, the foundations of US hegemony.”26 East Asian regionalism in economic
and trade matters, meanwhile, has tended to complement rather than challenge the WTO-led
liberalization regime.27 To the limited extent that East Asian regionalism has displaced the
WTO, it is a result of the disruptive policies pursued by ASEAN core leadership, and thus,
like the East African Community, cannot be attributed to the rise of China. The “China
effect” has been negligible.
On human rights and democracy, fears of a corrosive impact from the “Beijing
consensus” that encourages the repression of civil and political rights in order to achieve
economic growth and stability have proven unfounded. The continued rights-oriented drive
of the United Nations has been highlighted both in institutional reforms – the formation of
the new Human Rights Council in 2006 – and in a series of resolutions – for instance a 2004
resolution on democracy promotion that passed with the support of 172 out of 187 voting
members. Within Asia, the greater role of China within ASEAN (whose treaty of Amity and
Cooperation it signed in 2003) has not made that body less rights or democracy-friendly (or
more unfriendly). In fact, ASEAN’s momentum towards greater involvement in rights and
24 Shambaugh 2005 7. Also see Burstein and De Keijzer 1998. 25 Pearson 2006. 26 Wang 2007 59. 27 Rosen 2008; Lincoln 2004.
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democracy issues within member countries -- begun with a policy of “enhanced interaction”
in 1998 – has continued, vividly illustrated in its condemnation and response to the
Myanmar crisis of 2007.
On matters of security and defense, the U.S.-led hub-and-spoke system of security
alliances in Asia remains wholly in tact. While there has been some modest defense
strengthening in Japan, India, Singapore, and the Philippines28, Swaine notes that there is
little evidence of “deliberate force build-ups or other types of compensatory or anticipatory
moves indicative of an arms race or security dilemma” among Asian nations.29 Nor is their
evidence of deliberate balancing of China on the part of NATO members, despite the
appeals of many realists. Global non-proliferation efforts and the spread of UN peace-
keeping missions have not been undermined by the rise of China. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization of China, Russia, and four Central Asian nations, meanwhile, has not emerged
as a military alliance, since it lacks a mutual defense clause and has operated mainly on
transborder crime issues. The main challenge to NATO in Central Asia has come instead
from Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organization, which excludes China. China itself,
meanwhile, has been quickly integrated into multilateral security fora.30
Thus while there remains debate about future outcomes, the impact of China’s rise
on the international system thus far has been minimal. Explaining this outcome in a
theoretically rigorous manner should be a primary objective of students of international
relations.
iv. Explanations from Three Paradigms
Scientific paradigms direct attention to different sets of variables as being the most
salient ones for explaining outcomes. Each constitutes a worldview of its own, within which
theories are created and tested. In this paper, I limit the discussion to three mainstream
paradigms: realism, liberalism, and constructivism.
28 Ross 2007. 29 Swaine 2005 273. 30 Wu and Lansdowne 2007; Kent and East-West Center. 2007.
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The realist paradigm has been the foundation of fears of a rising China.31 Its three
core assumptions32 – that states are identical and unitary actors acting amidst anarchy, that
state preferences are fixed, and that relative power determines international system outcomes
– tend to generate theories that predict that rising powers will cause disruption to the
international system. In the case of China, realism has been deployed through power
transitions theory33 in particular to predict that a rising China will challenge and disrupt
world order.34 Yet despite this dominant “tragic vision”35 of international politics, realism
can also be deployed to predict good things, such as the peaceful integration of a rising
power into the existing international order. Given the number of strategic variables in pla
and limited resources, realism does not produce determinate predictions outside of concr
situations, implying that we do not know what to expect from a rising China until we specify
what is at stake for all key actors.
y
ete
36
Realist theories can predict non-disruption if it is assumed that state interests are not
conflictual in light of other commitments and given relatively full information and low
signaling costs. Under these conditions, a rising state may strategically opt to pursue a
cooperative foreign policy since it believes this serves its interests, while other states as well
as the international institutions that states control will accommodate that rise consistent with
their own interests – a version of Kupchan’s “benign regional unipolarity.”37 Johnston38 and
Sutter39 both argue that China is a status quo power because the world order serves its
interests reasonably well, while Lampton40 and Chan41 have made similar arguments about
31 Yahuda 1986; Mearsheimer 2005; Menges 2005; Gertz 2000. 32 Legro and Moravcsik 1999. 33 Organski and Kugler 1980; Houweling and Siccama 1988; de Soysa, Oneal, and Park 1997. 34 Goldstein 2008; Tammen and Kugler 2006. 35 Lebow 2003; Mearsheimer 2001. 36 Powell 1999. 37 Kupchan 1998. 38 Johnston 2003. 39 Sutter 2005. 40 Lampton 2005. 41 Chan 2007.
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the U.S. accommodation of a rising China. “Peaceful power transitions” are now widely
studied.42 It has been argued that a “win-win” dynamic is in play in Asia in particular, where
for economic and/or security reasons all key actors can benefit from China’s rise.43 Realism’s
explanation of peaceful rise thus rests on the view that there is a strategic accommodation of
China occurring in which all major actors have a stake.
The liberal paradigm puts primary emphasis on the domestic preferences of societies
and how those preferences shape both the foreign policies of states as well as the operation
of international institutions, understood as agents of shifting domestic preferences. The
liberal paradigm includes two distinctive strands: economic liberalism narrows the focus to
how domestic economic interests shape state foreign policies (consistent with Marxist or other
political economy approaches to the field) as well as how they interact directly at the
international level (consistent with interdependence or other international political economy
approaches). Democratic liberalism takes a more pluralist view of the relevant domestic
interests and preferences at stake, the most important of which may be non-economic in
nature. Consistent with its non-reductive view of institutions, it also problematizes the
question of how those preferences are represented, both by the state and by international
institutions.
Both strands of the liberal paradigm have been deployed to generate predictions of
the disruptive influence of a rising China. Writers in the economic liberal mould see the
insatiable quest for markets and raw materials by China’s global companies and traders as
leading it willy-nilly into conflict with the world’s other economies, both rich and poor, as
well as its major economic institutions.44 A U.S. congressional committee established in
2000, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, deliberates on the
potentially disruptive impact of China’s economic rise. Those writing in the democratic
liberal tradition, meanwhile, espy dangerous signs that rising nationalism or domestic
political unrest in China will “derail its peaceful rise”45, especially because China’s autocratic
institutions tend to give greater voice to disruptive or nationalist domestic influences. A
42 Kupchan, Davidson, and Sucharov 2001; Zhu 2006. 43 Danilovic and Clare 2007; Kang 2008. 44 Kynge 2006; Fishman 2006. 45 Shirk 2007.
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similar argument highlights the domestic interests outside of China --- whether acting
through international institutions hostile to the new “Beijing Consensus” or through “anti-
China” lobbies in Western nations – that will derail China’s peaceful rise by pursuing non-
accomm
al,
rgue
s:
nt
na as it
does at
the
ather than tactical
subjectively-constructed ideas in forming the interests, identities, and structures/institutions
odative policies.46
However, liberalism’s own “tragic vision” of China’s rise can be reversed by
changing two key assumptions that are employed to generate theories of disruption. One is
that the most salient interests both inside and outside of China, whether economic or plur
are those prone to conflict rather than cooperation. The other is that the mechanisms of
representation, whether at the level of states or international institutions, are those that tend
to give greater voice to conflictual rather than cooperative interests. Thus many writers a
that China’s economic expansion generates an array of positive-sum interactions across
borders that not only create a thick web of non-state cooperative interests but also ensure
that the foreign policies of China and of other nations remain basically cooperative as well.47
Others, writing in the democratic tradition, stress a confluence of wider cooperative interest
the “panda-huggers” in foreign lands and the haipai (“ocean faction”) in China.48 A nasce
school of scholars in China writing in the liberal tradition argues that domestic political
liberalization is creating the same incentives for “good governance” abroad by Chi
home – the so-called “inside-out” or you nei er wai foreign policy theory.49
A key point in these writings concerning representation is that China’s system
increasingly gives greatest voice to interests seeking “convergence with the world” (yu guoji
jiegui), while transnational socio-political alliances urging cooperation with China, such as
Chinese diaspora, the travel industry, or the global environmental movement, constrain
disruptive foreign policy behavior in their own lands. Travel agents r
strategists have the upper hand in defining outcomes, on this view.
Finally, the constructivist paradigm directs attention to the discursive interplay of
46 Peerenboom 2007. 47 Lo 2006; Shambaugh 2004; Keller and Rawski 2007. 48 Roehl 1990; Koehn and Yin 2002; Johnston 2004. 49 Liu 2006 63.
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that define the international arena.50 This process of norm-creation and socialization
operates at many levels and in many directions. Both states and societies, in addition to
engaging in their own domestic and internal discourses, are engaged in two-way relationships
with the international system and with other states and societies. International institutions in
this paradigm are more autonomous than in either of liberalism or realism, and thus “liberal
institutionalism” properly belongs to the constructivist paradigm, as does the “international
society” (English School) approach. Constructivism predicts conflict or cooperation
depending on how ideational differences are managed. Extreme normative dissonance will
produce conflict, as Bukanovsky argued of revolutionary France51, as Ninic argued of
“renegade regimes”52, and as several writers have argued with respect to contemporary
radical Islamic states.53
Many writers have warned of a fundamental ideational divergence between China
and the dominant West or China’s Asian neighbors.54 In Huntington’s “clash of
civilizations” thesis, the renewal of China’s civilizational beliefs “will place tremendous
stresses on international stability in the early 21st century”.55 Others see the “tragic vision” of
constructivism as resulting from the “liberal imperialism” of the West marching rhetorically
on China like a Napoleonic army.56 Rousseau offers a constructivist view of the rise of
“China threat” perceptions in the West that provides an ideational reason for conflict.57
However, what needs explaining at present is the lack of such global disruption.
Several theories have been offered from within the constructivist paradigm to explain this
outcome. A fundamental premise of the “tragic” constructivist vision of China’s rise is that
China’s domestic norms are deeply illiberal while those of the wider international system are
50 On constructivism in IR see Checkel 1998; Hopf 1998. A general statement of
constructivism in politics is found in Blyth 2003. 51 Bukovansky 2002. 52 Nincic 2005. 53 Fukuyama 2002.. For a counterargument see Hall and Jackson 2007.. 54 Downs and Saunders 1998; Lynch 2006; Peerenboom 2007; Goldstein 2006. 55 Huntington 1996 312. 56 Bell 2006 65-72; Peerenboom 2007 1-25. 57 Rousseau 2006.
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decisively liberal. Thus if one or both of these conditions is untrue, then there is no
necessary reason to expect disruptive consequences from China’s rise, other things being
equal. Either China’s domestic norms have become relatively liberal, or else the international
order is sufficiently pluralistic to accommodate a modestly illiberal China. Alternatively, from
a foreign policy perspective, constructivist theories have been offered that center on the
ability of Beijing to pursue a norm-consistent and consensual foreign policy that is delinked
from its illiberal domestic order.58
That then sets out the proper theoretical framework for explaining China’s peaceful
rise. If nothing else, greater clarity on this question could be achieved simply by keeping
these alternative explanations in mind. Choosing among them is the task to which we turn
next.
v. Choosing Among Explanations
Explaining a single data point such as China’s peaceful rise depends upon tracing the
processes or mechanisms through which that outcome occurs. Doing so requires identifying
the intervening variables through which the causal process – China’s rise leading to
international stability controlled for other factors – has attained. From the discussion above,
two obvious intervening variables are China’s foreign policy and the foreign policies of other
states. In addition, one antecedent variable -- the structures and institutions of the
international system – stands prior to China’s rise and yet is part of the same causal chain.
The dependent variable, meanwhile, can be parsed into three separate issue-areas in
order to increase the variation (“within-unit variation”) to be explained. For this purpose, I
will use the same three-part division mentioned above, which is widely invoked in foreign
policy debates: economics, trade and development (“trade” issues); human rights, democracy,
and domestic governance (“rights” issues); and national defense and international security
(“security” issues). This then gives a three-by-three matrix of independent and dependent
variables, or nine different causal pathways, along which qualitative evidence can be
considered in judging the relative importance of the competing paradigmatic theories of
China’s peaceful rise.
58 Wang 2003.
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China’s foreign policy on trade, especially since its accession to the World Trade
Organization in 2001, has been status quo in character.59 Not only has it sought to conform
to WTO rules and norms but more broadly it has taken a follower role in East Asian
regional trade liberalization.60 It was India and Brazil, not China, that were the main
advocates of the celebrated G20 proposal on agriculture and textiles raised by developing
countries seeking a revived “new international economic order” at the WTO’s Cancun
Summit in 2003. China signed on but was not a leader of that proposal. If there is evidence
of disruptive behavior, it is to be found in Beijing’s energy diplomacy, especially in Africa,
and in its undervalued exchange rate.61 However even in these contentious areas, it has
adopted more conciliatory policies of late. For the most part, China’s policy has been in
support of the existing international trade order.
The difficulties faced by the liberal explanation of this policy are most apparent.
China lacks any but the most minimal types of domestic interest group activity and
representation.62 As a result, there is scarce any evidence that would support liberalism’s
attribution of this trade policy to domestic interests, even though the local state is a powerful
lobbyist on matters economic.63 That leaves realist and constructivist explanations. Beijing’s
own realist explanation of its trade policy – that it wants to create a “favorable international
environment” for its domestic development – is obviously true, judged by internal policy
debates.64 Thus cooperation on trade matters is in part a strategic choice designed to
minimize international threats that would undermine its trade interests. This accounts for
some instances where Beijing has compromised its narrow trade interests in order to protect
broader trade interests: its failure to devalue during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, for
instance, or its sweeping commitments to market liberalization under its WTO accession
agreement.
59 Pearson 2006 256; Bergsten 2007 180; Chan 2006 ch.4. 60 Lampton 2005 341. 61 Taylor 2006. 62 The main “lobbying” on economic issues comes from foreign companies invested in
China and their appeals are usually for more not less protection. See Kennedy 2005;, 2005. 63 Zweig 2002; Chen 2005. 64 Nathan and Gilley 2003 232, 234.
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Yet in many others – its acceptance of continued quotas and monitoring of its textile
exports to the EU and U.S. following the expiration of the Multifibre Agreement in 2005,
for instance, or its acceptance of Taiwan’s prominent role in the WTO (most recently as
head of the Recently-Acceded Members group), or being an expected loser from a proposed
ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACTFA) – the compromises are so central to the
Chinese economy or other “national interests” that it is difficult to rationalize them in realist
terms.
Moore65 argues that the expected losses from the ACFTA can be rationalized in
terms of binding ASEAN more closely to China politically: that may be, but the same logic
has not held with Taiwan and its unclear why PRC policy-makers would assume it would
hold elsewhere. China launched only two formal complaints with the WTO in its first six
years of membership despite claiming an interest in 61 more cases between other parties
(primarily developing countries complaining about developed ones). One must therefore also
include the constructivist contention: China has accepted the international trade system
because it has developed an “irrational” belief in the cooperative spirit of that system, a view
particularly evident in its pursuit of Asian trade liberalization which otherwise yields it little
benefits.66 China’s 2007 submission to the WTO, for instance, while noting the “WTO's
inadequacy in balancing the trading interests of different countries and different regions, its
lack of attention to the interests of developing countries” argues that “The WTO
fundamental principles…have become the norms followed by China in the opening process
[because] the fair, open and non-discrimination principles sponsored by WTO…embody the
spirit of multilateralism in favor of joint participation in international affairs.”67
As with all three issue areas, China’s foreign policy is insufficient to explain its
“peaceful rise” on trade matters. The foreign policies of other states are no less central, and
here the liberal explanation in particular must be given its due. The rise of China has
generated some anti-accommodationist lobbies in many states, ones that might be expected
65 Moore 2007. 66 Pu 2006. 67 World Trade Organization, Trade Policy Review, Report by the People’s Republic of
China, 17 March 2006. Report Number: WT/TPR/G/161. Points 21 and 42. Available at:
http://docsonline.wto.org.
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to demand disruption to the world trading order to protect their interests. But it has
generated even stronger accommodationist lobbies that have kept the forces of protection at
bay. China’s economic rise has also generated positive structural conditions in the
international economy – lower global interest rates, for instance, and lower consumer prices
– that would be expected to mitigate the influence of containment lobbies. Interdependence
theory – the system-level account of the ways in which growing economic interdependence
creates structural incentives for states to cooperate on trade and other matters because of the
shared interests at stake – can be seen operating across a range of areas. The logic of
incorporating China into the international system as a “responsible stakeholder” – a phrase
used by U.S. deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick in 200568 – is essentially a liberal one:
that common citizen interests are served best by embracing a rising China, or as Zoellick put
it “where the parties recognize a shared interest in sustaining political, economic, and
security systems that provide common benefits.” Extended to the institutions of the
international economy itself – the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and ASEAN – where
“pro-globalization” interests dominate, the result has been a continued openness and non-
discrimination vis-à-vis China despite its rapid economic rise. Indeed, the forces of
economic globalization, which reduce the possibilities of backlash by either states or social
losers against structural shifts in economic activity, have created an amenable environment
for China’s rise. That a potentially hostile China is allowed to own 10% of outstanding U.S.
treasury bills reflects the force of liberal interests.
The failure of a rising China to make any dent in the strong liberal orientation of
international law and institutions relating to democracy, human rights, and governance is
perhaps the most surprising aspect of China’s peaceful rise. In part this is because China’s
foreign policy opposition to international human rights since the early 2000s has been
selective and low-key. Indeed, the main trend has been its abandonment of absolute notions
of sovereignty and its embrace of the rights-centered international order. This shift was first
evident in Beijing’s support of two UNSC resolutions in intervention in East Timor in late
1999 and then in 2001 by its ratification of the ICESCR. Since 2001, the rights discourse has
68 Robert Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?” Remarks to the
National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, 21 September 2005. Available at:
http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2005/Sep/22-290478.html.
16
spiraled quickly domestically. The protection of human rights was written into China’s state
constitution in 2004 while president Hu Jintao made democracy (although party-dominated
democracy) a centerpiece of his speech to a party congress in 2007. China has supported UN
efforts to establish electoral democracy in East Timor, Cambodia, and Afghanistan, for
example. Beijing effectively abandoned its Sudan and Zimbabwe allies after 2005 despite
having major energy and ideological interests in them both, and it supported the African
Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. It is likely to ratify the ICCPR soon.69
Again, the lack of any system of domestic representation makes the liberal
explanation of this mostly-cooperative stance unsustainable. Liberal rights activists in China
are more likely to be jailed than consulted by the government. There are a few exceptions to
this of course: the so-called “history activists”70 who demand that Beijing seek reparations
from Japan for war crimes in World War II or domestic environmental NGO’s pushing
Beijing to enact and uphold international environmental treaties.71 But for the most part,
China’s foreign policy on rights issues is insulated from such domestic pressures. The realist
hypothesis, meanwhile, also faces greater hurdles than it does in the case of economic and
trade issues. While it is possible to rationalize Chinese compromises on trade as “strategic”
moves, the same is not the case for rights and democracy, which are an unalloyed challenge
to the most fundamental core national interest of China, the preservation of the CCP’s
monopoly on power.72 Indeed, Carlson notes that the main “constraints” on China’s shifting
ideas on rights policy are other ideas: an enduring belief in a “century of humiliation” at the
hands of Western powers in the 19th century coupled with near-mystical beliefs in the sacred
“lost territories” of Taiwan, Tibet, and the South China Sea.
Thus to explain both the constraints and the changes in China’s stance on rights
issues, we must make recourse to constructivist explanations – the manifold ways in which
China, as previous rising great powers before it73, has “rethought” issues like sovereignty,
rights, and legitimacy in international affairs. Chen has documented the “identity
69 Lee 2007. 70 Reilly 2004. 71 Dai 2005. 72 Wang 2005. 73 Legro 2005.
17
transformation” that has overcome China, often through the agency of the state, since the
1989 Tiananmen massacre in which it has rethought human rights as largely consistent with
its “national interests”.74 A leading party thinker in China shows how the development of
rights-centered domestic norms of governance have been “externalized” in China’s foreign
policy.75 This has been reinforced by international norms. In Carlson’s words “the diffused
reinterpretation in the international arena of the legitimate intersection between state’s rights,
individual rights, and multilateral institutions…reframed how Chinese leaders approached
sovereignty-related issues”, consistent with constructivist theory.76
China’s recent policy on Myanmar is a good example. As recently as 2000, China’s
president Jiang Zemin assured his Myanmar counterpart that “China opposes the action of
interfering in the internal affairs of other countries in the name of ‘democracy’ and ‘human
rights’" while in 2003 a senior Chinese diplomat argued that "the current domestic situation
in Myanmar is the country's internal affair, and China will not agree to foreign interference
or to sanctions and isolation." In 2007, however, when a new crisis arose over
democratization in Myanmar, Beijing changed its tune. The same diplomat, Tang Jiaxuan,
now told a visiting Myanmar official to “push forward the democratization process
consistent with Myanmar’s national conditions” while premier Wen Jiabao said that
Myanmar should “achieve democracy and development.”77 Despite having major energy and
military interests in the junta, and despite the obvious border effects that a re-
democratization or Myanmar would have on China itself, Beijing also facilitated the
appointment of the special UN envoy to the country, Ibrahim Gambari, to negotiate
between the junta and the opposition, and hosted some of those talks in Beijing. It also
supported a United Nations Security Council resolution on Myanmar that condemned
violence against protestors and demanded the release of political prisoners. China’s role was
even more pro-active than that of democratic India, or indeed of ASEAN itself.
74 Chen 2007;, 2006. 75 Liu 2006. 76 Carlson 2005 247, 231, 231. See also Paltiel 2007; Foot 2000. 77 Xinhua News Agency, 7 June 2000; Reuters News Agency, 19 August 2003; Xinhua News
Agency, 13 September 2007; China News Service, 29 September 2007.
18
Nonetheless, China is far from being an enthusiastic supporter of the dominant
norms and institutions in the area of rights, which might be expected to lose their force as a
result. That they have not implies that the explanation of the continued resilience, indeed
expansion, of those norms and institutions coincident with China’s rise lies elsewhere – in
the foreign policies of other states and in the international structures undergirding them. The
global spread of democracy continues to exert a strong influence through both the liberal
preferences of both established and newly-democratic societies (the latter such as Poland or
Chile are often the strongest proponents of international rights agreements and democracy
promotion) and the norms that infuse international institutions. China’s rise has occurred in
an era in which new norms like that of humanitarian intervention and universal legal
jurisdiction, as well as new institutions like the rights-centered African Union, the
democracy-promoting Inter-American Democratic Charter, and the revamped UN Human
Rights Council, have emerged amidst continuing pressures in democratic societies for the
non-interest-based business of “saving strangers”78. In Asia, democracy has been
strengthened as the basis of the foreign policies of major states like Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Indonesia, and India.79 Consistent with liberal institutionalism, these institutions
have arisen for essentially idealistic or constructivist reasons.
At the same time, international institutions as well as the foreign policies of other
states have purposively not engaged in a dead-end antagonistic struggle with China over its
illiberal domestic institutions. Unlike the Soviet Union, China does not make universalistic
claims for its system, and accepts a developmental perspective on the evolution of that
system. Foreign actors are “betting on the long term” as Foot80 describes the system-level
response to the effect of China’s rise on rights issue. There is no “clash of civilizations” on
rights issues arising from China’s rise because international and foreign actors have
subjectively deemed such a clash to be neither necessary nor inevitable. China’s peaceful rise
in the area of rights, then, is also because of constructivist forces shaping and sustaining the
dominant rights-oriented world order. Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez have detailed the
78 Wheeler 2000. 79 Green 2006. 80 Foot 2000 224.
19
unexpected strength of the rights-oriented “international community” of the West even in
the wake of the split over Iraq.81
In the final issue-area of security, realism has long provided dominant explanations
of system persistence or change. Certainly as far as China’s foreign policy is concerned, both
Chinese officials as well as foreign scholars of China’s military and security policies virtually
all inhabit the symbolic world of realism. But it is precisely because the predictions of realism
in matters of security are so stark and unadmitted of rationalizing contortion that realism
fails most signally in this area. China’s foreign policy positions on a wide range of security
issues have changed in recent years to be more accommodative of existing security structures
and norms. Among the most important shifts, Beijing has: dropped calls for an end to the
U.S. hub-and-spoke military structure in Asia; supported UN Security Council sanctions on
North Korea and Iran; ceded de facto leadership of the Shanghai Cooperation Forum in
Central Asia to Russia; ended calls for a reunification timetable with Taiwan; dispatched
more than 2,300 peacekeepers to four separate UN missions; opened discussions with India
on hitherto non-negotiable territorial claims; and handled the crash-landing of a U.S. spy
plane on Hainan Island in a low-key technocratic manner.
Certainly, scholars writing in a realist vein have sought to justify these policies as
being consistent with China’s “national interests”. Goldstein, for instance, argues that Beijing
backed down on attempts to end the U.S.-led security structure in Asia because it
“recognizes that it derives benefits from the pacifying influence of the American
presence.”82 while Chang says of its u-turn on North Korea that “realistically, the world's
oddest bilateral relationship, as it has been called, no longer serves China's interests.”83
Lampton says that China’s newly-cooperative stance on security affairs is “seen by Beijing
a more feasible way to protect economic interests and interdependencies than a ruinous
drive for military power.”
as
some
84 But these post-hoc rationalizations make little sense from
objective assessment of China’s national interests. From any genuine realist perspective, the
continued U.S. alliance structure in Asia, a democratization of the Korean peninsula, a loss
81 Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005. 82 Goldstein 2005 35. 83 Chang 2007 26. 84 Lampton 2005 37.
20
of influence to Russia and NATO in Central Asia, or a vulnerability to U.S. naval power in
the Taiwan Strait are a threat to China’s national interests.
As the one realm of foreign policy that has been most thoroughly arrogated to the
state, security affairs are even less sensitive to domestic preferences than trade or rights
issues. To be sure, the rise of a more vocal and organized Chinese nationalism in the post-
Tiananmen era has forced the regime’s hand in certain instances – its response to the 1999
bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy by U.S. forces, for instance, or its defense of the
disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the face of nationalist pressures at home.85 But more
often, the compromises that Beijing has made on issues like the U.S. spy plane incident of
2001, the status of Taiwan, or Japanese rearmament have flown in the face of nationalist
agitation. Indeed, it is precisely the disjunct between Chinese nationalism and Chinese
foreign policy that makes the CCP so vulnerable to nationalist criticism.86 This is one area
where domestic preferences are decidedly not at play. As Wang Jisi, director of the CCP’s
Institute of International Strategic Studies, puts it: “The absence of electoral, cyclical politics
helps keep China’s foreign policy more consistent and strategically-oriented than those of
many other governments”.87
If China’s accommodative security policy is neither realist nor liberal in origins, then
we are again left with the constructivist explanation: China’s state and broader society have
been rethinking the world security order as they come to terms with its ideational or
normative underpinnings. The reason why it has pledged reconstruction funds for
Afghanistan, sanctioned Iran and North Korea, and accepted the U.S. military presence in
Asia is that it has learned through discursive interactions that these things are widely
legitimate.88 Its quiet dropping of opposition to the U.S. hub-and-spoke system in Asia, for
example, was not for realist calculations. Rather, as Shambaugh documents, it resulted from
discursive interactions with other Asian states that taught Beijing that the U.S. presence was
widely deemed in the region to be stabilizing and thus legitimate.89 “Asia for the Asians” fell
85 Liu and Hao 2005. 86 Gries 2004. 87 Wang 2007 27. 88 Johnston 2008. 89 Shambaugh 2005 28. Also see Medeiros and Fravel 2003.
21
on deaf ears in a region that does not share the instinctive anti-Americanism of a rising
China.
As Deng argues, China’s spirited denial of the “China Threat Theory” makes no
sense from a realist perspective since that theory tended to enhance its power and deterrent
capabilities. Rather, it was concerns about its legitimacy that explained the campaign, as well
as its subsequent policy changes. “Overall, seeking legitimate power has fundamentally
defined the motivational structure of Chinese foreign policy.”90 In contrast to the “high
mimesis” cultural frame applied to Taiwan in the 1990s, to borrow Smith’s terms on war
theory91, Chinese policy has subsequently been rethought in “low mimesis” terms,
concerned only with preventing de jure independence rather than forcing reunification.92
r
manageable terms.
Chinese foreign policy thinkers, more concerned with China’s international role, now refe
to the Taiwan issue as “a pain in the neck”93 – rather like former U.S. secretary of state
Madeleine Albright referred to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as “migraine Hussein” in the
low mimesis days prior to 9-11. This reflects a subjective reconceptualization of the Taiwan
security problem in limited,
The foreign policies of other states, in particular those in Asia, towards China on
security matters is perhaps most inexplicable from the realist perspective. China’s rising
military power would also seem destined to cause balancing and challenging among Asian
nations. But instead the response has been non-armament and inclusion. Why? For Kang,
there is a particular norm of accommodation of China in Asia that leads Asian states to
embrace its power.94 Shambaugh espies “increasing signs of normative convergence around
the region.”95 Similarly, Acharya has traced the normative accommodation of China by
Southeast Asian nations, acting not on interests but on reconceptualizations of those
interests themselves.96 It is, in other words, not prudential fear but normative favor that has
90 Deng 2006 204, 201. 91 Smith 2005. 92 Wang 2007. 93 Zheng 2006 200. 94 Kang 2003;, 2008. 95 Shambaugh 2004 96-97. 96 Acharya and Goh 2006; Acharya 2001.
22
prevented disruption by a rising China in Asia. Similar dynamics have played out in
European capitals, which came close to lifting a post-Tiananmen ban on arms sales to China
in 2005.
The failure of the U.S. in particular to engage in more serious balancing is most
notable given its position at the top of the power hierarchy. Nor is this merely an transient
artifact of the U.S. commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan: frustrated realists in the U.S. such
as Friedberg97 argue that their country is simply not making use of available resources to
balance China. Instead, U.S. security policy in Asia has been constrained by a knowledge that
Asian nations do not share the same apprehensions about China’s rise as do some hawks in
Washington. It is Washington, not Beijing, which has emerged as the main deterrent power
on Taiwan’s assertion of its independence now that China’s own policy on Taiwan has
moved into line with the international normative consensus that de jure independence is
unacceptable. On the whole, then without a broader normative argument about why the
world community of democracies should seek to contain a rising China as it did a rising Soviet
Union, realists in the U.S. are howling in the wilderness.
Closely linked are the structural aspects of the international system in matters of
security. This is one place where realist approaches to relative power are apposite. The
failure of “hegemonic stability theory” (or unipolar stability theory) as evidenced in the trans-
Atlantic rupture over the Iraq war, and earlier concerns arising from, for instance, the U.S.
abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, have generated countervailing
tendencies for a re-balancing of power in the international system towards a multipolar (U.S,
EU, Russia, and China) model.98 Waltz’s assertion99 that balance is as close to an iron law of
international politics is being realized in the ascendancy of China as balancer. Indeed, fears
that a unipolar U.S., jealous of its unrivalled position, might engage in a destabilizing attempt
to contain a rising China, have informed the shift towards multipolarity, as Shambaugh
shows.100 This leads to systemic pressures for an accommodation, even encouragement, of a
rising China (as well as Russia, India, and the EU) in order to restore balance to the system.
97 Friedberg 2007. 98 Mowle and Sacko 2007; Hinnebusch 2006; Kugler, Tammen, and Efird 2004. 99 Waltz 1979. 100 Shambaugh 2006.
23
The logic of nuclear deterrence continues to stabilize world order not by containing a rising
China as Goldstein101 argued, but rather by making use of a rising China to contain a unipolar
U.S. (and its temptation of launch preventive strikes on North Korea for example). Thus,
adding to the intentional state-level constructivist reasons why EU nations seek to
accommodate (even arm) a rising China are unintentional system-level realist ones. Similarly,
India’s post-2003 rapprochement with China – almost a decade after its exploded a nuclear
bomb warning about China – reflects broader system-level incentives for major powers to
bandwagon with Beijing in the interests of system stability, as well as “their larger worldview
of international politics”, according to an Indian security analyst.102
Yet constructivist mechanisms are not absent at the system level on security issues.
International institutions and the non-institutional global discourse on the relationship
between power and legitimacy provide a normative reason for the continued
accommodation of China’s reasonable claims in security issues. China is in other words
rising at a time when the international system is more than ever designed to operate on an
ideal rather than interest-based basis. The best example of this in matters security – where
China’s rise is clearly destabilizing from an interest-based perspective and yet legitimate from
a normative perspective -- is China’s gainful advances in space. Beijing completed its first
manned space flight in 2005, test-fired an anti-satellite weapon in January 2007, and
conducted the 100th launch of its Long March rockets in June 2007. All three programs
threaten space arms races but have nonetheless been accepted as legitimate given the
histories of the U.S. and Russia doing likewise. China’s race to space is understood at a
normative level, whatever its strategic threats, and thus accommodated, even in the absence
of formal agreements. No less than other alleged “hard realms”, China’s role in space
demonstrates the normative construction of “interests” that are quite “other-worldly” from
the perspective of realist or liberal theories.
Based on the analysis above, then, each of the nine causal pathways can be scored in
terms of which paradigmatic theory or theories have the greatest explanatory power over
China’s peaceful rise. The results are summarized in Figure 4.
101 Goldstein 2000. 102 Pant 2007 58.
24
[Figure 4 about here]
Even at this stage it is clear that all three paradigms are an important part of any
explanation of such a large, system-level outcome. However, their contributions vary.
Realism works in limited ways, mainly in the security area. Liberalism provides greater
leverage across issue areas and across process variables. Its main limitation in this instance is
case-specific: China’s own foreign policies, to the extent that they matter to China’s peaceful
rise, are largely insulated from domestic preferences. Constructivism, by contrast, operates
powerfully across all three issue areas and across all three process variables.
Aggregating this multi-mechanism picture into an all-things-considered explanation
of China’s peaceful rise would require a further theory of the inter-relations among the three
issue-areas and of the relative importance of the three process variables. However it is
possible to make some conditional claims even without such theories. If China’s foreign
policy is given at least equal importance with the other two process variables, then
constructivism looms as the most important overall variable, even if we assume that the
security or trade areas are far more important than rights. Indeed, the only way to conclude
that constructivism is not the most powerful overall explanation is if we put a heavy emphasis
on the foreign policies of other states in the trade sector – a kind of economic liberalism
along the lines of journalist Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches” or “Dell” theories of
world peace.103 Obviously, different scoring in the nine boxes would lead to different
conclusions. However, it would require a dramatic re-scoring to eliminate constructivism’s
advantage, given that its “opposition” is split between liberal and realist theories. In short,
we can be reasonably sure that a certain amount of re-scoring would not represent a major
validity challenge to this conclusion.
vi. Theoretical and Policy Conclusions
The findings here from a single case study do not yield theoretical conclusion about
the general causes of peaceful rises of great powers. Such events are sufficiently rare in
international relations that is it doubtful that homogeneity assumptions could ever be met
103 Friedman 1999 195. Friedman 2005 421.
25
that allow one to make generally valid propositions. However, they do shed important light
on the nature of the contemporary international system and the paradigms used to study it.
As far as theory is concerned, while there have been calls for a new international
relations theory to explain the apparent anomaly of China’s peaceful rise104, the analysis here
shows that it can be easily understood through existing theory. Existing paradigms, and the
theories generated within them, are perfectly adequate to address the relevant issues and
debates. Indeed, to the extent that this paper shows how it is possible to provide both a
parsimonious as well as a multi-causal explanation of China’s peaceful rise, it is a strong
affirmation of existing international relations theory. As with demands to “Africanize” IR
theory105, demands to “Sinicize” or “Asianize” often turn out to be appeals for specific
foreign policy analysis or some form of cultural assertion bereft of new theoretical
categories.106
That said, the rise of China is sufficiently momentous to international relations that it
will certainly contribute to a furthering of existing international relations theory.107 The
findings here suggest two main theoretical contributions of China’s rise.
First, while realism and constructivism are generally seen as polar opposites, the
study of China shows how closely related they are: Great Powers that have a strong core of
fairly objective national interests, as does China, are almost by virtue of that bound to be
highly ideational in their foreign policies, especially in the absence of domestic or trans-
national interest group pressures. If they wish to maintain any sort of peaceful coexistence
with other powers, they must be highly subjective in their understandings of the world
system, so numerous are the potential conflicts and competitions they face. Great powers
like China that are realist by nature become constructivist by necessity.
Secondly, foreign policy outputs may be of minimal importance to international
system outcomes even in the case of a rising power. The importance of China’s foreign
policy in this outcome is varied and often quite unsubstantial – even though virtually all
104 Song 2001; Ren 2008; Kang 2003. To be fair to Kang, his later work emphasizes the need
to properly apply existing IR theory rather than to overthrow it. See Kang 2008. 105 Dunn and Shaw 2001. 106 Lee 2000. 107 Callahan 2001; Katzenstein and Sil 2004.
26
work on China’s peaceful rise is a study of China’s foreign policy. The somewhat
embarrassing conclusion from the standpoint of this literature is that the study of China’s
peaceful rise needs to be much more centered on the study of the sources of stability in the
international system itself.
The most obvious policy conclusion to draw from this analysis is one of good news:
China’s peaceful rise is not a temporary blip caused by contingent factors but a durable result
of both the consensus within the existing international order and of China’s domestic
transformation. The importance of China’s domestic transformation in particular deserves
attention. In contrast to prevailing views of China as the "high church of realism"108, the
analysis here suggests that it is at present the “high church of constructivism”, especially
given the absence of serious domestic interest pressures.
The corollary is that a democratization in China, or serious liberalization, could
unseat this foreign policy. Rather than pouring scorn on the democratic project in China for
“realist” reasons, however, the analysis here suggests quite the opposite: because the
outcome in question is only partly defined by China’s own foreign policy and also relies on
the behavior of the international system and or other states, a more disruptive foreign policy
in China could be responded to constructively by other states aware of its temporal and
(changeable) nature.109
That leads to a final policy conclusion: the critical importance of threats to the
constructivist norms that presently shape the international system itself. In particular, for the
United States, engagement with China has a twofold purpose: both encouraging China’s
cooperative foreign policy as well as binding itself to more norm-consistent uses of its power
– engaging in socialization as well as being socialized. China is not fated to challenge U.S.
hegemony in Asia in strategic terms. But it does represent a serious ideational challenge. If
China’s soft power in the region expands because of its legitimist pursuit of consensus
norms, then only way for U.S. to prevent this is to be an even more legitimate player in Asia
and the world. There is much evidence that this lesson is being learned in the U.S. – a recent
108 Christensen 1996. 109 Legro has emphasized the importance of being ready to respond to “potential
replacement ideas circulating in China and their backers – ones that may someday be
conceptual kings.” Legro 2007 527.
27
bipartisan report on concludes that “China can only become preeminent if the United States
continues to allow its own powers of attraction to atrophy.”110
More broadly, as Carlson and Suh argue111 and consistent with the findings of this
paper, if China’s peaceful rise is ultimately a result of an ungainly combination of realist,
liberal, and constructivist factors, then the willingness of the U.S. to put up with this
ambiguity and not seek to impose a unidimensional framework on the region – shared
security, shared interests, or shared identities -- must be critical. U.S. policy will remain
effective by remaining sensitive to the ambiguous ways in which Asian nations have heaved
to the U.S. flag in the face of China’s rise. ENDS
110 CSIS Commission on Smart Power 2007 26. 111 Carlson and Suh 2004.
28
Tables and Figures
Figure 1: China and U.S. Shares of World Output, 1980-2008 (Gross domestic product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) share of world total.)
0
5
10
15
20
25
1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008
% ChinaU.S.
Source: International Monetary Fund.
29
Figure 2: China’s Defense Spending Compared to Asian Neighbors (2005)
0
20
40
60
80
100
120U
S$b
ChinaJapanIndiaSouth KoreaAustraliaTaiwanIndonesia
Source: The Military Balance, 2007.
30
Figure 3: Attitudes Towards China Compared to the U.S. In Major Countries
Pakist
an
Malays
ia
Egypt
Indones
ia
Russia
Turkey
France
Brazil
SpainNigeri
a
German
y
Britain
South Korea
India
Mexico
South Afri
ca
PolandIta
ly
Japan-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80%
Chi
na B
ette
r
Difference between percentage of respondents somewhat or very favorable towards China and somewhat or very favorable towards the U.S.. Source: Pew Global Attitudes Survey, June 2007.
31
Figure 4: Evidence for Theories of China’s Peaceful Rise Across Three Major Issue-Areas Outcome Variables Process Variables Trade Rights Security
China’s Foreign Policy R and C C C Other States’s Foreign
Policies L L and C R, L, and C
Operation of the International System L and C C R and C
R=realist theory; L=liberal theory; C=constructivist theory
32
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