breeding a reluctant dragon: can china rise into partnership and away from antagonism?

Abstract

the rise of china became a popular subject in china comparatively recently, gaining prominence only in the last decade. for those in china who were used to understanding modern chinese history as a history of victimisation at the hands of imperialism, recognising such a return to the world stage was an uneasy shift. in the context of international concerns that china’s rise poses a threat to world peace or a contribution to the clash of civilisations, chinese narrators initially refused to portray a ‘rising china’ because this could easily lead to china becoming the target of a us-organised containment policy in the post-cold war era. shortly before the chinese communist party (ccp) outlined new policy directions at its fifteenth congress in 1997, leaders in beijing began to think about a way of describing china’s rise as unthreatening. yet this was a reluctant change because beijing was willing to acknowledge china’s rise only indirectly. what came out of the congress was the recognition of the necessity that beijing should frame its foreign policy to emphasise its relations with the other great powers more than those with the third world. accordingly, they decided that beijing should develop a distinctive strategy specifically to deal with the other great powers.

Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or a New Hegemony?

“…Here Tianxia is embedded in an important debate about how China can fit into the world system as a ''responsible great power'' that has emerged through a network of liberal Chinese IR scholars over the past decade (see Wang YZ 1999;Xia 2001;Shih 2005). China is trying to prove to the world (especially the West) that it is no longer a revolutionary state that challenges international order, but is a ''responsible'' member of international society.…”

Understanding the Political Economy of Cross-Strait Security: A Missing Link

“…49 Indeed, there has been growing acknowledgement that the political economy of state-business relations is a dynamic process of complex interactions in which multiple actors with different organizational characteristics and public-private connections interact with one another to produce a wide range of results. 50 Moreover, globalization has also increased the capital mobility that has fundamentally changed the terms on which private actors can engage the state. To the extent that state policies comply with dominant social institutions and interests, they might succeed.…”

“…As Campbell indicates, While dependent on specific historical contexts, we can say that for the state, identity can be understood as the outcome of exclusionary practices in which 49 Chu [21], 169. 50 See, for example, Tian [18]; and Friedman [64]. 51 Campbell [15], 61.…”

“…See Shih[50] 37. On the importance of deepening and broadening the concept of cause in the IR theorizing, see Kurki[55].Understanding the Political Economy of Cross-Strait Security: A Missing Link…”

Ideas matter: China’s peaceful rise

“…Without proper understanding of China's ideas, it will be difficult to define the attributes of Chinese intention. Will China be, for instance, assertive to revoke the status quo and displace it with what it has advocated over the past years (i.e., multipolar world) (Shih 2005) or will it use power to benefit world development and prosperity?…”