Abstract
Thanks to supercharged economic growth, coupled with abundant physical and human capital, as well as political clout as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China is a rising great power on the world stage. Whereas the former China under its closed, mysterious, and communist ideology was characterized as a threat to Asian and world peace during the Cold War years, today, ironically, a more open and internationally engaged China again triggers the “China threat” rhetoric. Despite China's constant assurance of peaceable foreign policy intentions and claims that it will “never seek hegemony,” skeptics rebuke these as a mere smokescreen that covers an enormous forward thrust, evidenced, for example, by the expansionist moves toward islets in the South China Sea. On the one hand, whether aggressive moves qualified China as a threat is still debated. On the other hand, whether provocative actions would escalate into large-scale militarized conflicts that jeopardize regional stability constitutes the immediate concern.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Economics and Econometrics,Sociology and Political Science,Development
Reference59 articles.
1. I did not derive the hypothesis from neorealism because it is technically impossible to define the exact polarity situation in the contemporary Asia-Pacific. But I would incorporate neorealists' concern for anarchy into my institutionalist hypothesis because institutionalists' belief that international institutions would moderate the hazardous consequences of anarchy, I argue, essentially addresses the neorealists' key point.
2. I am fully aware that this could be a controversial coding choice—after all, when talking about the role of institutions in mediating controversies between China and other countries over South China Sea territories, one often and intuitively refers to regional institutional arrangements. Since the current purpose is simply to test whether institutions matter, not the detailed working of specific institutions, the UN proxy can be temporarily justified. As the result indicates, under certain circumstances institutions do influence China's decision to use force. I return to this issue below.
3. Growing strong: China's challenge to Asian security
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1. Conceptual and Theoretical Framework;The Political Economy of the Asia Pacific;2010