Abstract
Japan has been a strong supporter of America’s ‘pivot’, or ‘rebalance’, to the Asia-Pacific. Why has it responded in such a way? Japan’s established position in the region naturally makes it a keen supporter of the status quo and thus of the US-led order. Yet this does not fully explain Japan’s support. This article contends that to understand Japan’s position, it is necessary to more closely consider how Japan views the rebalance’s probable strategic benefits and costs. In fact, increasingly difficult Sino-Japanese relations have led Japan to reassess such costs and benefits, with Japan becoming more anxious to ensure that the United States continues to provide strategic reassurance to the region, even if this means that Japan is required to restructure its own security role in return. In turn, Japan’s security restructuring has important implications not only for its national security but also for wider regional stability.
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Country or Region: China
Krupakar, Jayanna
Abstract
The article assesses China’s Indian Ocean strategy against the backdrop of its naval base development in Djibouti. It argues that China’s naval force posturing stems from a doctrinal shift to ocean-centric strategic thinking and is indicative of the larger gameplan of having a permanent naval presence in the Indian Ocean. China’s maritime strategy comprises four key components. First, to channel naval reinforcements for securing its maritime trade and economic interests in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR)—even as it strengthens the Maritime Silk Road initiative. Second, to develop logistical and operational capacities for a permanent far-seas presence, including preparedness for maritime combat and non-combat operations. Third, to undermine India’s geo-strategic influence in the IOR as the two lock into a near zero-sum game maritime competition. Fourth, to overcome the threat of US naval dominance and deter its coercive tactics by enhancing the costs of military conflict. Beijing’s ultimate objective is to emerge as a ‘global maritime power’ capable of commanding the far seas and oceans.
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Tan, See Seng
Abstract
This article assesses the extent to which Singapore has been willing to facilitate the rebalancing strategy of the United States, despite a number of challenges it has had to face as a consequence of its strategic choice. It argues that Singapore’s backing for the rebalance is but the most recent demonstration of the city-state’s longstanding support for America’s forward presence. While this policy has engendered problems for Singapore, including incurring China’s ire, these problems are unlikely to change Singapore’s fundamental belief in the importance of America’s strategic guarantee to the Asia-Pacific and Singapore’s role in support of that.
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Zhang, Feng
Abstract
Chinese policy elites regard the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region as a major strategic challenge that must be met with a determined yet patient response. Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping still seeks long-term stability with the United States by proposing to build a new model of great power relationship. On the other hand, however, Beijing has significantly revamped its strategy toward countries on its regional periphery by both pivoting toward the Eurasian continent and by developing a new resolve to protect its interests in maritime Asia. These indirect counterstrategies reveal the novelty and significance of China’s multifaceted response to the US rebalance.
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Wu, Guoguang
Summary
Nominally the highest decision-making body in the Chinese Communist Party, the Party Congress is responsible for determining party policy and the selection of China’s leaders. Guoguang Wu provides the first analysis of how the Party Congress operates to elect Party leadership and decide Party policy, and explores why such a formal performance of congress meetings, delegate discussions, and non-democratic elections is significant for authoritarian politics more broadly. Taking institutional inconsistency as the central research question, this study presents a new theory of ‘mutual contextualization’ to reveal how informal politics and formal institutions interact with each other. Wu argues that despite the prevalence of informal politics behind the scenes, authoritarian politics seeks legitimization through a combination of political manipulation and the ritual mobilization of formal institutions. This ambitious book is essential reading for all those interested in understanding contemporary China, and an innovative theoretical contribution to the study of comparative politics.
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Tønnesson, Stein, and Pavel K. Baev
Abstract
The article discusses if China will be inspired by its strategic partner Russia to use force as an instrument of its foreign policy. After a pro et con discussion the authors find that the disincentives created by the Russian example are likely to convince China that it should continue to show restraint under the ‘peaceful development’ formula, and avoid military adventures. The East Asian Peace is thus not seriously threatened, at least not by China—for now.
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Song, Wenzhi, and Sangkeun Lee
Abstract
Analysis of China’s response to North Korea’s grave provocations confirms that China has been adjusting its policy toward North Korea, considering North Korea’s stability and the likelihood of US military intervention while pursuing an engagement with North Korea. China has pursued soft engagement when the likelihood of US military intervention has been low and North Korea has been unstable, semi-hard engagement when the likelihood of US military intervention has been high and North Korea has been stable, and hard engagement when the likelihood of US military intervention has been low and North Korea has been stable. China has increased its pressure on Pyongyang to denuclearize since North Korea’s third nuclear test. However, this is merely hard engagement and cannot result in a fundamental change of China’s policy toward North Korea. Unless China changes its strategic goal to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, it will retain its engagement policies toward North Korea.
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Shen, Wei, and Marcus Power
Abstract
The spectacular scale and speed of China’s domestic renewable energy capacity development and technology catch-up has in recent years been followed by the ‘go out’ of Chinese clean energy technology firms seeking new markets and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the growing involvement of China in the development and transfer of renewable energy technologies in Africa and examines the key drivers and obstacles shaping Chinese renewable energy investments and exports. Far from there being some kind of grand or harmonious strategy directed by a single monolithic state, we argue that fragmented and decentralised state apparatuses and quasi-market actors in China are increasingly pursuing their own independent interests and agendas around renewable energy in Africa in ways often marked by conflict, inconsistency and incoherence. Moving beyond the state-centric analysis common in much of the research on contemporary China–Africa relations, we examine the motivations of a range of non-state and quasi-state actors, as well their different perceptions and constructions of risk, policy environments and political stability in recipient countries. The paper explores the case study example of South Africa, where Chinese firms have become increasingly significant in the diffusion of renewable energy technology.
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Rudolph, Jennifer, and Michael Szonyi, eds
Summary
Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.
In only a few decades, the most populous country on Earth has moved from relative isolation to center stage. Thirty of the world’s leading China experts—all affiliates of the renowned Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University—answer key questions about where this new superpower is headed and what makes its people and their leaders tick. They distill a lifetime of cutting-edge scholarship into short, accessible essays about Chinese identity, culture, environment, society, history, or policy.
Can China’s economic growth continue apace? Can China embrace the sacrifices required for a clean environment? Will Taiwan reunite with the mainland? How do the Chinese people understand their position in today’s global marketplace? How do historical setbacks and traditional values inform China’s domestic and foreign policy? Some of the essays address issues of importance to China internally, revolving around the Communist Party’s legitimacy, the end of the one-child policy, and ethnic tensions. Others focus on China’s relationship with other nations, particularly the United States. If America pulls back from its Asian commitments, how will China assert its growing strength in the Pacific region?
China has already captured the world’s attention. The China Questions takes us behind media images and popular perceptions to provide insight on fundamental issues.
Ringen, Stein
Summary
The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving.
Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, Stein Ringen concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe.
By analyzing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of “socialist market economy,” corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, The Perfect Dictatorship broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies.
Qiu, Fahua
Abstract
Based on the perspectives of popular nationalism and state nationalism, this article investigates the current status of nationalism as well as its effects on the regional security order in Northeast Asia. The rise of nationalism in Northeast Asia is multifaceted and presents a dynamic development trend, which has a profound impact on the regional security order in Northeast Asia. Although the popular nationalism of Northeast Asian nations has various effects on the diplomatic decision-making of the respective governments, all of these versions of nationalism affect normal communications among nations in the region. Thus, each government should be careful when utilizing nationalism to realize its political purposes. Indeed, Japan and China should learn from the lessons of history in World War II and avoid falling into the abyss of state nationalism. Each nation in Northeast Asia should pay more attention to the rise of nationalism in the region, constrain its narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness, and aspire to rational patriotism. By doing so, a peaceful, secure, and prosperous regional security order in Northeast Asia could be constructed.
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Noland, Marcus, and Donghyun Park, eds
Summary
Asian financial systems, which serve the most economically dynamic region of the world, survived the global economic crisis of the last several years. In From Stress to Growth: Strengthening Asia’s Financial Systems in a Post-Crisis World, scholars affiliated with the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Asian Development Bank argue in separate essays that Asian systems must strengthen their quality, diversity, and resilience to future shocks in order to deliver growth in coming years. The book examines such phenomena as the dominance of state-owned banks, the growth of nonbank lending (the so-called shadow banks), and the need to develop local bond markets, new financial centers, and stronger supervisory tools to prevent dangerous real estate asset bubbles. China’s large financial system is discussed at length, with emphasis on concerns that China’s system has grown too fast, that it is overly tilted toward corporate borrowing, and that state domination has led to overly easy credit to state-owned actors. Asia needs investment to improve its infrastructure and carry out technological innovation, but the book argues that the region’s financial systems face challenges in meeting that need.
Nautiyal, Annpurna
Abstract
China’s aggressive rise and strained relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbours—a region with immense economic and strategic potential—have forced the US to forge a strategy of Asian rebalance. Besides making China suspicious, this strategy has aroused the possibility of a new cold war. In contrast, though India’s relations with China have improved considerably since the 1962 War, the unresolved border issue and the threatening Chinese attitude do not allow India to trust China. To deal with the Chinese threat, India has devised a Look East, Act East engagement policy as well as developed close economic and strategic relations with the US and its Asia-Pacific allies. Although the concern of strategic autonomy deters India from being an active partner of US strategy, China’s all-weather friendship with Pakistan and encirclement through infrastructure in its neighbourhood as well as Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream have left limited options for India. Therefore, this article aims to analyse the implications of US re-involvement in the Asia-Pacific and India’s role therein—particularly its concerns regarding this strategy.
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Lubina, Michal
Summary
This book depicts the sophisticated relationship between Russia and China as a pragmatic one, a political marriage of convenience. Yet at the same time, the relationship is stable, and will likely remain so. After all, bilateral relations are usually based on pragmatic interests and the pursuit of these interests is the essence of foreign policy. And, as often happens in life, the most long-lasting marriages are those based on convenience.
Lee, Manhee
Abstract
This paper explores how to keep a balance between liberalistic and realistic perspectives in Korea’s free trade agreement (FTA) with China by analyzing nations’ FTA strategies. The United States uses the FTA as a supplementary to fulfill its grand strategy, while China employs it as a way to prevent the emergence of an anti-China bloc and to reduce its vulnerability. Their strategic thinking marks the FTA as crucial in attaining these non-economic and economic objectives. Differed FTA strategies pose a task for a higher-cost economy to take a balanced posture in its FTA with a low-cost economy. This feature urges Korea to attempt it for the sake of fostering economic prosperity as well as security in its FTA with China. As a way to practice it, Korea should reconsider Japan’s and ASEAN’s reoriented behaviors in their relations with China. Under growing asymmetrical interdependence, they resort to the alliance with the United States while maximizing economic benefits in trade with China. Korea can also take a balanced posture by increasing economic benefits in its economic relations with China and by consolidating its ties with the United States. Growing Korea–China interdependence increases their opportunity costs of troubles in trade. Not only the costs, but also the Korea–US ties would constrain China to have an incentive to use its economic advantage in managing the power relations with Korea. Another way to practice it is to undertake a hub and participate at more multilateral regimes. Currently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be an alternative. Reshaping resources diplomacy and improving Korea’s image from a Chinese perspective could be adopted as supplementary to attaining economic security in the relations with China.
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