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.

1

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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.

8

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.

9

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.

10

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.

11

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.

12

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.

13

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.

14

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.

15

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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