China between region and world

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 61, 2009, Pages 1-20

  Womack, Brantly ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DECISION MAKING; FOREIGN POLICY; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL POWER; SPATIAL ANALYSIS;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 62749109649     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.61.20648043     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Kenneth Waltz {Theory of International Politics [New York: McGraw Hill, 1979], pp. 114-16) asserts that, without strong sovereign authority within states, unruly regional actors will bring about international anarchy. Waltz's argument has been contested in theoretical terms, but not often in regard to concrete cases. My discussion of China suggests that diverse economic and social realities can influence a central state's international policy without threatening its sovereign authority.
2. The traditional Chinese empire did not fit this modal type in its relations with, for instance, Vietnam from 1427 to 1887; however, it was not a single polity, and therefore not a region-state.
3. Peter Cheung, "Provincial Leadership and Economic Reform in Post-Mao China", in Peter T. Y. Cheung, Jae Ho Chung and Zhimin Lin (eds), Provincial Strategies of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 3-48.
4. Fei Hsiaotung, Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese People (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1988).
5. Qin China stretched from Liaoning in the north to Vietnam's Red River valley in the south, and west to the current border with Myanmar. Tan Qixiang (ed.), Jianming Zhongguo lishi dituji (Concise Historical Atlas of China) (Beijing: China Cartographic Publishing House, 1991), pp. 15-16.
6. Peter Perdue, China Marches West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
7. Lloyd Eastman, Family, Field, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's Social and Economic History, 1550-1949 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3-14.
8. Skinner uses the term "macroregions" because they are the apex of a hierarchy of geographical centers building up from market towns with their associated villages. From the perspective of international regions, we might view these as "microregions", but their scale and socio-economic autonomy are impressive even by international standards. G. William Skinner, "Urban Development in Imperial China", in The City in Late Imperial China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1977), pp. 3-32.
9. G. William Skinner, "The Spatial Logic of Uneven Development in Contemporary China", Public Lecture, Shanghai, 13 May 2005.
10. G. William Skinner, "Urban Development", p. 11.
11. G. William Skinner, "Spatial Logic", Figures 1-13.
12. Joseph B. R. Whitney, China: Area, Administration, Nation-Building (Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Geography Research Paper no. 123), Figure 4, p. 43.
13. Richard Smith, China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty 1644-1912 (Boulder: Westview, 1983), pp. 19-20.
14. Hsi-Sheng Ch'i, Warlord Politics in China 1916-1928 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976). As Ch'i observes, "Order had to be reestablished. Whereas everybody hoped to improve his own position against the others, nevertheless he would agree that unity should be restored and authority reestablished" (p. 18).
15. Xinhua, "China Moves to Curb False Statistics", China Daily, 18 August 2006.
16. The classic analysis of Guangdong is Ezra Vogel, Canton Under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, 1949-1968 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969).
17. The reorientation of Guangdong in the reform era is described in Ezra Vogel, One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
18. Fujian suffered the additional burden of militarization. Yeung Yue-man, Fujian: A Coastal Province in Transition and Transformation (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2000).
19. Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 178-79.
20. Samuel Kim, "The Making of China's Korea Policy in the Era of Reform", in David Lampton (ed.), The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 371-408.
21. Jörn Dosch and Oliver Hensingerth, "Sub-Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia: The Mekong Basin", European Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2005), pp. 263-85.
22. This argument was first made in Brantly Womack and Guangzhi Zhao, "The Many Worlds of China's Provinces: Foreign Trade and Diversification", in David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal, China Deconstructs: Politics, Trade and Regionalism (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 131-76.
23. "More than 1000 Rescued from Forced Labor in China", Xinhua, 13 August 2007.
24. Besides the opening up of trade and investment, Ye suggested that Taiwan could retain its own army, and that Beijing would not interfere in its internal affairs. See "Chairman Ye Jianying's Elaborations Concerning the Return of Taiwan to Motherland and Peaceful Reunification" (30 September 1981). Available at: http://www.fmprc.gov. cn/eng/ljzg/3568/t17783.htm, last accessed 28 November 2008.
25. "President Ma's Inaugural Address", 20 March 2008, at http://www.president.gov.tw/en, last accessed 28 November 2008.
26. Howard French and Lydia Polgreen, "New Power in Africa", New York Times, 18 August 2007.
27. "Zhongyang waishi gongzuo huiyi zai Beijing juxing, Hu Jintao zuo zhongyao jianghua" (Central Conference on International Work Held in Beijing, Hu Jintao Gives Important Speech), Xinhua Wang, 23 August 2006.
28. See Wolfgang Bauer, China und die Hoffnung auf Glück (China and the Search for Happiness) (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1971), pp. 412-52.
29. Charles Kindleberger, World Economic Primacy, 1500-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
30. Long before Kindleberger, Ibn Khaldun opined that the desert spirit of the Bedouin overcame the softness of the cities and was in turn seduced by its conquest. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, tr. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005; original 1683), pp. 133-42.
31. These figures are for 2001, and include China itself. Excluding China itself, the group would be 44 per cent of the population of the rest of the world and 24 per cent of its GNP. Calculated from the World Bank, World Development Indicators, licensed CD version.
32. Regions and regional powers are discussed more fully in Brantly Womack, "Teoría de la asimetría y poderes regionales: los casos de India, Brasil, y Sudáfrica" (Asymmetry Theory and Regional Powers: The Cases of India, Brazil and South Africa) in Juan Tokatlian (ed.), India, Brasil y Sudáfrica: El impacto de las nuevas potencias regionales (India, Brazil and South Africa: The Impact of the New Regional Powers) (Buenos Aires: Libros de Zorzales, 2007), pp. 15-34.
33. The semi-exceptions would be a smaller state threatening a larger one with terrorism or nuclear proliferation. Terrorism raises the level of individual risk but does not directly put the state at risk. Nuclear weapons are more of an "equalizer", but only at the level of mutual destruction, and fortunately international relations are usually more complex than that.
34. The most recent, extensive and impressive attempt to divide the world into discrete regions is Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
35. For current regional attitudes toward China, see Bronson Percival, The Dragon Looks South: China and Southeast Asia in the New Century (Westport: Praeger, 2007)
36. and Robert Sutter, China's Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
37. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed from parts of the Soviet Union after its dissolution. It includes all of the former Central Asian Soviet Republics except Turkmenistan, which retreated to associate member status in 2005, but it also includes European members and does not aim at regional comprehensiveness in Central Asia.
38. Expectations that Iran, India and Pakistan would join the SCO at this time were apparently frustrated by US opposition. M. K. Bhadrakumar, "China, Russia Welcome Iran into the Fold", Asia Times Online, 18 April 2006, available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HP18Ad02.html, last accessed 28 November 2008.
39. Peter Fedynski, "Shanghai Cooperation Organization Seeks to Expand Energy and Security Influence", Voice of America News, 16 August 2007.
40. Ilan Greenberg and Andrew Kramer, "Cheney, Visiting Kazakhstan, Wades into Energy Battle", New York Times, 6 May 2006.
41. See David Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
42. As an example, China's interest in divide and rule is a Leitmotiv of Kay Möller, China und das wiedervereinte Vietnam (China and Reunified Vietnam) (Bochum: Studienverlag Brockmeyer, 1984).
43. Melvin Gurtov, China and Southeast Asia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
44. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (NewYork: W. W. Norton, 2001).
45. A more sophisticated version of the thesis is provided by Ronald Tammen and Jacek Kugler, "Power Transition and China-US Conflicts", Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 35-55.
46. The role of the US dollar as world currency might be seen as the most important exception to multi-nodality. However, the dollar's domination of world transactions is diminishing, and it is more likely to be replaced by a basket of transnational currencies rather than by another single currency.
47. All trade data is for 2004 and from World Trade Organization, "Statistics Database", http://stat.wto.org/, last accessed 28 November 2008.
48. Anand Giridharadas, "Asian Finance Ministers Seek Common Currency", New York Times, 5 May 2006.
49. Brantly Womack, "Asymmetry Theory and China's Concept of Multipolarity", Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 13, No. 39 (May 2004), pp. 351-66.
50. David Finkelstein, China Reconsiders Its National Security: The Great "Peace and Development"Debate of 1999 (Washington: CNA Corporation, 2000).
51. Bonnie Glaser and Evan Medeiros, "The Changing Ecology of Foreign Policy-Making in China: The Ascension and Demise of the Theory of 'Peaceful Rise'", The China Quarterly, No. 190 (June 2007), pp. 291-310.
52. The European Union is comparable to the US in capacities, but it is not (yet) a state.