Americans and the rise of China as a world power

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 19, Issue 65, 2010, Pages 479-501

  Xie, Tao ^a   Benjamin, Page I ^b  

^a BEIJING FOREIGN STUDIES UNIVERSITY   (China)

^b NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; NATIONAL SECURITY; NEOLIBERALISM; POLITICAL POWER;

CHINA; JAPAN; TAIWAN;

EID: 77951882087     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670561003666095     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. This comparison is based on data from the Conference Board. This dataset was originally developed by Angus Maddison in a series of publications. It uses the 1990 International Geary-Khamis dollar, a hypothetical unit of currency that takes into account both Purchasing Power Parities (PPP) and the international average of commodity prices.
2. As such, the Geary-Khamis dollar allows researchers to make cross-country and over-time comparisons: Angus Maddison, Historical Statistics for the World Economy: 1-2003 AD (2008), available at: http://www.ggdc.net/ Maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_03-2007.xls (accessed 16 September 2008)
3. The Conference Board, Total Economy Database (January 2009), available at: http://www.conference-board.org/economics (accessed 4 May 2009).
4. China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that China's GDP was 18.4 trillion yuan in 2005. If we use the annual average of nominal exchange rates, which was 8.2 yuan per dollar, then China's GDP was only US$2.2 trillion.
5. Many ecChonomists prefer to use Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) statistics, which convert foreign currencies into a common currency (usually the US dollar) on the basis of the actual purchasing power of those currencies, based on surveys of the prices of various goods and services in each country. Using PPP, the International Comparison Program (ICP), which is coordinated by the World Bank, reported China's 2005 GDP to be US$8.8 trillion, making China the world's second largest economy.
6. However, revised PPP data released by the World Bank in December 2007 put China's GDP at US$5.3 trillion, 40% smaller than the ICP's previous estimate. The revised figure puts China's GDP at 43.1% of that of the US revision decreased China's 2005 share of world GDP from 14.2% to 9.7%, while the US share rose from 20.5% to 22.5%.
7. See 'Clipping the dragon's wings, recalculating China's GDP', Economist, (22 December 2007)
8. Wayne M. Morrison and Michael F. Martin, How Large Is China's Economy? Does It Matter? (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2008.
9. These average annual real GDP growth rates were calculated by the authors using the Total Economy Database. The figures are slightly different from China's official average annual real GDP growth rates, which were 5.3% from 1960 to 1978 and 9.7% from 1979 to 2006.
10. See Craig K. Elwell et al., Is China a Threat to the US Economy? (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2007), p. 5. During the same 1950-2007 period, according to the Conference Board, Japan's average annual growth rate was only 5.3%.
11. A stronger rival for rapid growth is South Korea, whose annual GDP grew at a 7.3% annual rate from 1950 to 2007, though only at 6.5% (compared with China's 8.3%) from 1978 to 2007.
12. According to the Total Economy Database, China's per capita GDP in 1990 US dollars was merely US$6,003, compared with US$31,378 for the US, US$23,135 for Japan, and US$19,994 for South Korea.
13. Albert Keidel, China's Economic Rise-Fact and Fiction (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008), p. 1, but see pp. 5-6.
14. There is no clear consensus on when China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy. Global Insight, a leading economic forecasting firm, has predicted that China's economy will overtake the US economy by 2015. Quoted from Elwell et al., Is China a Threat to the US Economy?, p. 15.
15. While dominant types of international relations theories assesses China's rise from a different perspective, these each of the three theories should not be viewed as monolithic. Instead, within each theory there are competing views.
16. For an excellent review of inter-theory and within-theory disagreements about China's rise, see Aaron L. Friedberg, 'The future of US-China relations: is conflict inevitable?', International Security 30(2), (2005), pp. 7-45.
17. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 1st edn (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. xi-xiii. It should be noted that Mearsheimer distinguishes his own theory of 'offensive' realism-which emphasizes the motivation of survival in an anarchic system but postulates relentless power seeking with the goal of becoming a hegemon-with Hans Morgenthau's 'human nature realism' and with Kenneth Waltz's 'defensive' (though also structural) realism.
18. See Ibid., pp. 17-22
19. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948)
20. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).
21. Defensive realists like Kenneth Lieberthal and Jeffrey Garten tend to be less apprehensive about the rise of China, and more supportive of peaceful engagement than are neoconservatives or offensive realists like Mearsheimer. See Jeffrey E. Garten, 'Power couple', New York Times, (15 January 1996), p. A11
22. Kenneth Lieberthal, 'The China challenge', Foreign Affairs 74(6), (1995), pp. 35-49.
23. Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China's Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Alastair Iain Johnston, 'Is China a status quo power?', International Security 27(4), (2003), pp. 5-56.
24. John G. Ikenberry, 'The rise of China and the future of the West', Foreign Affairs 87(1), (2008), pp. 23-37.
25. China State Council, White Paper: China's Peaceful Development Road (22 December 2005), available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/22/eng20051222_230059.html (accessed 28 January 2009).
26. Madelyn C. Ross, 'China's international economic behavior', in Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh, eds, Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 436, 443.
27. Karl Deutsch et al. strongly argued that international trade and other cross-border interactions lead to integration and peaceful relations by making war more costly and hence less likely. Karl Wolfgang Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).
28. See David Shambaugh, ed., Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), especially chs 6, 8 and 9.
29. Janaki Kremmer, 'Once lock-step Australia tunes out US drumbeat on China', Christian Science Monitor, (17 March 2006), p. 5
30. Steven R. Weisman, 'Rice and Australian counterpart differ about China', New York Times, (17 March 2006), p. A8.
31. William Choong, 'Australia's China conundrum', Strait Times, (30 December 2008).
32. Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications, 'Good relations with China will benefit all', The Australian, (2002), p. 8.
33. Anthony Paul, 'China, Australia come full circle', Strait Times, (4 April 2006).
34. Matthew Forney, 'China's quest for oil', Time Magazine, (18 October 2004), available at: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,725174,00.html (accessed 17 February 2009)
35. International Crisis Group, China's Thirst for Oil (9 June 2008), available at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id1/45478 (accessed 10 February 2009).
36. Peter C. Evans and Erica S. Downs, Untangling China's Quest for Oil through State-Backed Financial Deals (Brookings Institution, May 2006), available at: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2006/05china_evans/pb154.pdf (accessed 17 February 2009).
37. For comprehensive scholarly reviews of China's energy involvement in Africa, see Erica S. Downs, 'The fact and fiction of Sino-African energy relations', China Security 3(2), (2007), pp. 42-68
38. Stephanie Hanson, China, Africa, and Oil (Council on Foreign Relations, 6 June 2008), available at: http://www.cfr.org/publication/9557/(accessed 17 February 2009)
39. Dennis M. Tull, 'China's engagement in Africa: scope, significance and consequences', Journal of Modern African Studies 44(3), (2006), pp. 459-479.
40. According to Forney, Chinese-owned overseas production supplies about 5% of China's total oil imports: Forney, 'China's quest for oil'.
41. For a thorough discussion of China's energy relationship with Sudan and the impact of this relationship on China's Sudan policy, see International Crisis Group, China's Thirst for Oil.
42. R. Evan Ellis, China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009).
43. Bloomberg News, 'China to shift $20 billion as capital for policy bank', New York Times, (1 January 2008), p. C9. For critical assessments of the China Investment Corporation, see Victor C. Shih, 'A creature of the government: the China Investment Corporation', paper presented at the Cornell Workshop on Sovereign Wealth Funds, Cornell University, 6 November 2008
44. Edwin M. Truman, 'The management of China's international reserves: China and a SWF scoreboard', paper presented at the Conference on China's Exchange Rate Policy, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 19 October 2007
45. Ming Zhang and Fan He, 'China's sovereign wealth fund-weakness and challenges', Working Paper No. 0823 (Research Center for International Finance of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2008).
46. Samuel S. Kim, 'China's international organizational behavior', in Robinson and Shambaugh, eds, Chinese Foreign Policy, p. 406.
47. Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
48. Carin Zissis and Jayshree Bajoria, The Six-Party Talks on North Korea's Nuclear Program (Council on Foreign Relations, 14 October 2008), available at: http://www.cfr.org/publication/13593/ (accessed 22 February 2009).
49. 'China the largest UNSC contributor to peacekeeping missions', Xinhua News Agency (28 September 2006), available at http://www.gov.cn/misc/2006-09/28/content_401811.htm (accessed 23 February 2009).
50. G77 and China, Declaration by the Group of 77 and China on the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference at Doha, Qatar (22 October 2001), available at: http://www.g77.org/doc/Doha.htm (accessed 23 February 2009)
51. G77 and China, Declaration by the Group of 77 and China on the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference (22 August 2003), available at: http://www.g77.org/doc/docs/FinalG77Decl-22aug-5thWTO.pdf (accessed 23 February 2009).
52. This and other recent surveys have been conducted for the CCGA by Knowledge Networks (KN), using web based interviews with a sample of Americans drawn from their representative panel of respondents.
53. The rises in average influence ratings for all countries between 2006 and 2008 are probably a methodological artifact. In 2008, respondents who replied 'don't know' to many questions [who probably tended to give low (e.g. 5.0) ratings when they gave ratings] were eliminated. This should not, however, affect the relative rankings that we focus on.
54. Joseph S. Jr. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). See also Christopher B. Whitney and David Shambaugh, Soft Power in Asia: Results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2009).
55. See Also Christopher B. Whitney and David Shambaugh, Soft Power In Asia: Results of a 2008 Multinational Survey of Public Opinion (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2009)
56. Average ratings for having an appealing popular culture were China 5.5, Japan 7.1, South Korea 4.5; for being an attractive destination for international tourism, China 6.6, Japan 7.8, South Korea 5.0; for having developed religious traditions that have been influential in other parts of the world, China 4.9, Japan 5.2, South Korea 4.0.
57. Americans generally dislike socialism or large bureaucracies: fully 80% said that the 'better economic system' is one with an economy defined by 'free markets and open competition' rather than one defined by 'broad government intervention and control'. In a parallel survey, a large majority (68%) of Chinese respondents actually agreed.
58. The China threat question was asked face-to-face in the 1990, 1994, and 1998 surveys, but by telephone in 2002 and over the Internet in 2004, 2006, and 2008. It and 11 other threat questions were also asked for the CCGA on a small 2004 CCI telephone survey, which can be used to identify mode effects and to make direct, single-mode comparisons with the 2002 telephone data. For methodological details, see the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Global Views 2004 (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2004), pp. 4-5.
59. The 2004 telephone result for China was 40% 'critical threat', substantially higher than the 33% on the Internet survey done at about the same time and suggestive of a mode effect
60. But taking all 12 threat items together, 'critical threat' responses averaged only 3.0 percentage points higher by telephone than on the Internet, indicating that any mode effect was fairly small. Still, the 2002 57 t% 'critical 'threat' result appears to be a bit inflated in relation to the subsequent Internet results, so that part of the post-1998 drop probably occurred by 2002 rather than afterward.
61. For detailed discussion of Americans' reactions to China's economy, see Benjamin I. Page and Tao Xie, Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
62. Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett, II, Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Threat to America (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999).
63. China's defense budget to grow 14.9% in 2009', Xinhua News Agency, (4 March 2009), available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/04/content_10940787.htm (accessed 14 April 2009).
64. US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People's Republic of China, available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/China_Military_Report_08.pdf (accessed 3 February 2009), p. I.
65. For fiscal year 2009, the total discretionary budget authority for the Department of Defense is US$585 billion, and the total outlays are estimated to be US$651 billion. Office of Management and Budget (2009), available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/defense.html (accessed 28 June 2009).
66. For the Pentagon's estimate of China's 2008 defense budget, see US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress, p. 31.
67. According to China's National Defense in 2008, a white paper released by the Chinese State Council Information Office, China's defense spending in 2007 was RMB355.491 billion, up 19.3% from 2006 but accounting for merely 1.38% of China's GDP and 7.14% of state financial expenditures. In 1998-2007 defense spending increased at an annual rate of 15.9%, compared with 12.5% for GDP and 18.4% for state financial expenditures.
68. Thus China's defense expenditures as a proportion of its GDP may have increased, but as a share of state financial expenditure they have decreased. They remain very low as a proportion of GDP. China State Council Information Office, China's National Defense 2008 (20 January 2009), available at: http://www.scio.gov.cn/zfbps/ndhf/2009/200901/t256758.htm (accessed 4 March 2009).
69. See Andrew Moravcsik, 'Washington cries wolf: don't believe the hype; Beijing's military buildup isn't as scary as it seems', Newsweek, (31 March 2008), available at: http://www/newsweek.com/id/128415 (accessed 3 February 2009).
70. See Milton Ezrati, 'On the horizon: the dawn of a new Sino-Japanese rivalry', Harvard International Review 24(1), (2002), pp. 20-26
71. Thomas J. Hirschfeld, 'Assessing China's military potential', East Asia 17(1), (1999), pp. 95-107.
72. While China's relative strategic power still lags far behind that of the US, its increased absolute power nonetheless can matter a great deal because it significantly raises the potential costs for the US of any armed conflict. In other words, China would almost certainly lose badly in a war with the United States, but its rapidly increasing absolute power gives it diplomatic leverage and may deter certain US actions, e.g. in relation to Taiwan.
73. On Japan and Germany, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 172-190. See also his Chapter 9 on causes of great power war.
74. Ibid., pp. 397-402.
75. Susan Shirk adds the caveat that domestic political fragility, in the face of a nationalistic populace, could lead China to dangerous international behavior. Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
76. The prologue to the 'strengthen its alliance with Japan' question read: 'As China becomes increasingly powerful in the East Asia region, do you think the US should
77. See Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, chs 7-8.
78. For changing US security and strategic policy in East Asia, see International Institute for Strategic Studies, 'America's alliances in East Asia: purposes and prospects', Strategic Comments 11(3), (2005), available at: http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-11-2005/volume-11-issue-3/americas-alliances-in-east-asia/
79. Carin Zissis, Crafting a US Policy on Asia (Council on Foreign Relations, 10 April 2007), available at: http://www.cfr.org/publication/13022/crafting_a_us_policy_on_asia.html (accessed 5 March 2009).
80. See Tom Shanker, 'Arms deal to Taiwan riles China', New York Times, (5 October 2008), p. A13.
81. On this and a number of other matters the American people disagree with many US foreign policy elites and decision makers.
82. See Benjamin I. Page and Jason Barabas, 'Foreign policy gaps between citizens and leaders', International Studies Quarterly 44(3), (2000), pp. 339-364
83. Benjamin I. Page with Marshall M. Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don't Get (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), ch. 7.
84. We measured information levels by using responses to a question about whether China loans more money to the United States (correct), the two loan about the same amount to each other (wrong), or the United States loans more to China (badly wrong) to form a simple linear scale.
85. For the logic of instrumentally oriented 'purposive believe systems', and evidence of their prevalence in the mass public, see Page with Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect.
86. For evidence across a wide range of foreign policies that Americans' collective preferences generally follow a neo-liberal configuration (favoring diplomacy, multilateral cooperation, international treaties and agreements and the like)
87. Nicholas D. Kristof, 'The rise of China', Foreign Affairs 72(5), (1997), p. 59.
88. We emphasize 'current' opinions because we are under no illusion that public opinion is impervious to change. In response to events, media coverage, or government manipulation, public opinion can change swiftly and significantly. The Tiananmen Incident illustrates the powerful impact of a media-reported event on US public opinion
89. Favorable ratings of China dropped overnight from a record high of 72% to a record low of 34%. Gallup Poll, (25 April 2009), available at: http://institution.gallup.com/content/?ci=1627 (accessed 25 April 2009).
90. An account of how a 'rational public' has responded to outside events is offered in Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).