Review of International StudiesInternational... · Hegemonic transition in East Asia? ... paradigm’s well known strengths and weaknesses.8 Robert Gilpin, perhaps the foremost exponent

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Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power

MARK BEESON

Review of International Studies / Volume 35 / Issue 01 / January 2009, pp 95 112DOI: 10.1017/S0260210509008341, Published online: 08 January 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210509008341

How to cite this article:MARK BEESON (2009). Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power. Review of International Studies, 35, pp 95112 doi:10.1017/S0260210509008341

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Review of International Studies (2009), 35, 95–112 Copyright � British International Studies Association

doi:10.1017/S0260210509008341

Hegemonic transition in East Asia? Thedynamics of Chinese and American powerMARK BEESON*

Abstract. The ‘rise of China’ is seen by some observers as a precursor of inevitable hegemoniccompetition in East Asia. At the very least, it seems likely that China’s influence in East Asiawill grow at the expense of the United States. Whether this will eventually amount to a formof ‘hegemonic transition’ is far less clear. It is, therefore, an opportune moment to consider therelative strengths and weaknesses of China and the US in East Asia. This paper suggests thatthe nature of hegemonic competition and transition is more uncertain and complex than someof the most influential theoretical understandings of hegemony would have us believe.

Introduction

The ‘rise of China’ is certain to be one of the most important features of, andinfluences on, the international system in the twenty-first century. The opening-up ofthe Chinese economy under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970striggered a remarkable and unparalleled economic expansion that is affecting boththe People’s Republic of China (PRC) itself and the region of which it has historicallybeen such a central part. This rapid recent transformation in China’s economicfortunes has not been greeted with universal enthusiasm, however. On the contrary,for some prominent observers of international affairs, especially in the United States,the rise of China is a harbinger of inevitable and unwelcome change. JohnMearsheimer, for example, argues that ‘a wealthy China would not be a status quopower but an aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony’.1 Theimplication as far as American foreign policy is concerned is clear: China should becontained, its economic development slowed, and the concomitant decline in theposition of the US should be delayed for as long as possible. While perspectives suchas Mearsheimer’s have not been the only influence on American foreign policy,2 theyreflect a prominent school of thought in the US and elsewhere which believes that there-emergence of China as a ‘great power’ at the very least presages an hegemonic

* I would like to thank RIS’s reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.1 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001),

p. 402.2 There is another, currently less influential school of ‘panda huggers’, which believes that China

should be engaged rather than contained, and which is optimistic about the pacific influence ofgreater economic interdependence on Chinese foreign policy. See David Shambaugh, ‘Containmentor engagement of China? Calculating Beijing’s responses’, International Security 21 (1996),pp. 180–210; International Herald Tribune, 5 October 2005.

95

transition in East Asia, if not outright conflict as the US and China struggle fordominance.

There is, of course, nothing new about such views. The idea that hegemoniccompetition and transition are inescapable, cyclical features of the inter-state systemhas been suggested by scholars operating from a number of perspectives, some ofwhich are briefly considered in the first part of this article. There are, however,grounds for questioning whether such predominantly state-centric analyses capturethe complex nature of ‘China’s’ incorporation into the contemporary internationalorder, or of the multi-dimensional nature of ‘American’ power either. For example,although it has been the growth of mainland China’s economy that has attractedmost attention of late, the possible emergence of a ‘greater China’ that incorporatesTaiwan, Hong Kong and the fifty million or so ‘overseas Chinese’ in Southeast Asiahighlights the potentially transnational nature of Chinese influence and power.3

Similarly, while it has become increasingly plausible and commonplace to argue thatAmerican influence and power are inexorably waning,4 the US retains an enduringcapacity to influence international economic, political and cultural practices in waysthat are not captured easily by an exclusive focus on foreign policy or strategy.5

The possible limits of exclusively state-centric analyses notwithstanding, examin-ing the prospects for hegemonic transition in East Asia remains a useful exercisefor a number of reasons. First, it provides a framework within which to explore thecomparative merits of the contending theoretical explanations of the political,economic and strategic changes currently underway in East Asia. Second, ithighlights the relative strengths and weaknesses of China and the US, and illustratesthe complex, frequently contradictory and paradoxical, nature of their growinginterdependence. Finally an analysis of ‘China’s rise’ suggests that whatever meritvarious theories of hegemonic transition may have had in the past, they may all needto be rapidly rethought: the sheer scale of China’s economic development and the tollit is inflicting on the natural environment mean that its continuing rise is anything butassured. On the contrary, China’s embrace of rapid capitalist development – adevelopment which might have been seen as an unambiguous long-term manifesta-tion of American hegemony and structurally embedded influence – may prove highlydestabilising and unsustainable; but not necessarily for traditional reasons of greatpower politics.

Consequently, after considering how hegemonic transitions have been understoodtheoretically, I explore the way in which China’s rise is affecting strategic relations.I suggest that American military might is less valuable than it once was, and this hasgiven added significance to China’s growing economic power. China is attempting tocapitalise on this and play an active regional leadership role in East Asia. In thecourse of the discussion I compare China’s foreign policy with that of Japan’s, acountry that also had the economic capacity to play a prominent regional role, butwhich failed to do so, primarily because of its continuing subordination to the US.China, by contrast, has no such inhibitions. And yet, the East Asian experiencesuggests that historically-grounded expectations of linear hegemonic progress are

3 Y.-W. Sung, The Emergence of Greater China: The Economic Integration of Mainland China,Taiwan and Hong Kong (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005).

4 See, for example, Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York:Metropolitan Books, 2006).

5 Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

96 Mark Beeson

being undermined by rapidly emerging, and possibly implacable environmentalconstraints. Paradoxically enough, therefore, an exploration of the possibilities forhegemonic transition highlights both the limitations of some of our most influentialtheoretical paradigms, as well as the profound, possibly insurmountable practicallimits to nationally-based rivalries.

Theorising hegemony

Expectations that East Asia would generate rising powers and become the site of aprocess of hegemonic transition are not new. What is relatively novel, is the idea thatChina, rather than Japan, might be the East Asian nation that achieved this. Asrecently as the 1990s, many observers confidently expected that Japan wouldovertake the US to become the world’s largest economy and assume a political statusand influence that matched its economic weight, fundamentally reconfiguring EastAsia’s intra- and inter-regional relations.6 Japan’s failure to assume this position tellsus something about the respective nature of China’s rise, America’s enduring power,and the character of hegemony more generally. Before considering this in any detail,however, it is useful to illustrate some of the contrasting ways hegemony has beenunderstood.7

One of the most influential and enduring conceptions of hegemony and hegemonictransition emerged from the realist tradition, and it consequently shares many of thatparadigm’s well known strengths and weaknesses.8 Robert Gilpin, perhaps theforemost exponent of this model, claimed it is ‘the differential rate of change betweenthe international distribution of power and the other components of the system thatproduces a disjuncture or disequilibrium’.9 Such disjunctures – especially changes inthe relative economic standing of different states – undermine the balance of power,introduce instability and tension, and encourage rising states to try and transform theinternational system to reflect their interests. In this reading, conflict is inevitable asdeclining powers will seek to resist a process that inevitably diminishes their relativeposition.

And yet recent East Asian history suggests that there is nothing preordained aboutthe way such relationships will develop or about the impact of economic, political orstrategic power: Japan’s post-war subordination to the US is markedly at odds withthe expectations of realists and serves as a reminder that international relations in theEast Asian region might not follow a universal template.10

6 See, for example, Barry K. Gills, ‘The hegemonic transition in East Asia: A historical perspective’,in S. Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993), pp. 186–212.

7 For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see M. Beeson, ‘American ascendancy:Conceptualising contemporary hegemony’, in M. Beeson (ed.), Bush and Asia: America’s EvolvingRelations with East Asia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2006), pp. 3–23.

8 See, Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Is anybody still a realist?’ International Security, 24(1999), pp. 5–55.

9 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),p. 48.

10 Christopher W. Hughes and Akiko Fukushima, ‘US-Japan security relations: Toward bilateralismplus?’, in E. S. Krauss and T. J. Pempel (eds), Beyond Bilateralism: US-Japan Relations in the NewAsia-Pacific (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 55–86.

The dynamics of Chinese and American power 97

To understand why, and how this might affect China, it is necessary to saysomething about the nature of American hegemony and the specific circumstances inwhich it consolidated after the Second World War. In this context, East Asia was akey arena in which the rapidly escalating struggle with the Soviet Union would beplayed out. Significantly, however, and in sharp contrast to the experience of WesternEurope, American policy in East Asia was preoccupied with establishing a series ofbilateral, ‘hub and spoke’ security relationships with the individual states of thenon-communist parts of East Asia,11 rather than the sort of integrated, region-wideorder that eventually underpinned the development of the European Union. Thenotably different treatment of Asia’s newly independent or recently defeated statesnot only reflected American policymakers’ very different views about European andAsian political elites, but it profoundly influenced the sort of intra- and inter-regionalrelations that emerged over the longer-term in the context of American hegemony.12

The American way of hegemony

‘American hegemony’ is distinctive and multi-dimensional in ways that merit spellingout. As far as East Asia was concerned, a preoccupation with containing theperceived threat of communist expansion not only gave a defining rationale topost-war American policy, but it directly underpinned the remarkable renaissance ofJapan and the wider East Asian ‘miracle’, of which Japan’s economic developmentwas such a central, calculated and strategically pivotal part.13 Without American aidand investment, there is no doubt that East Asia’s remarkable development wouldnot have occurred at the pace it did.14 Equally importantly, without an initialwillingness on the part of the Americans to turn a blind eye to the sorts of frequentlyauthoritarian,15 neo-mercantilist, state-led development strategies Japan pioneeredand which others – including China – have attempted to emulate, it is also clear thatthe region’s development would not have occurred in the manner that it did. That theUS has been of late less willing to tolerate deviations from the ‘Washingtonconsensus’ highlights another aspect of American hegemony,16 the relative impor-tance of which is dependent on a wider geo-political context.

A second key dimension of American hegemony, then, is the way a particular setof ideas or values were operationalised as part of the so-called Bretton Woodsinstitutions.17 Significantly, control of the international financial institutions (IFIs)

11 Kent E. Calder, ‘Securing security through prosperity: The San Francisco System in comparativeperspective’, Pacific Review, 17 (2004), pp. 135–57.

12 Mark Beeson, ‘Re-thinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historicalperspective’, Journal of European Public Policy, 12:6 (2005), pp. 969–85.

13 Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York:Oxford University Press, 1997).

14 Richard Stubbs, Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005).15 Even Japan had what has been described as a ‘soft’ authoritarian government, a pattern that was

replicated even more forcefully in other parts of the region. See, Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.), TheDevelopmental State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

16 Mark Beeson and Iyanatul Islam, ‘Neoliberalism and East Asia: Resisting the WashingtonConsensus’, Journal of Development Studies, 41:2 (2005), pp. 197–219.

17 Robert Latham, The Liberal Moment: Modernity, Security, and the Making of Postwar InternationalOrder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

98 Mark Beeson

is one area in which there is increasing concern about the inequitable dominanceof the US in particular and the ‘Western’ nations more generally: East Asiannations are strikingly under-represented in such bodies and a change in their statuswill be a key manifestation of a changing international order if and when itoccurs.18 There is, however, another more informal, diffuse and intangible aspectof American hegemony which is reflected in the institutionally embedded domi-nance of a range of cultural and economic practices associated with the US,leading some observers to claim that it is uniquely placed to benefit from the veryorder it helped create.19

There is clearly something in this. After all, this is the way hegemony ought towork – from whichever perspective one approaches American power. Neo-Gramscian scholars have usefully drawn attention to the intersection of materialpower and ideas, and their crystallisation in formal and informal institutions.20

Whether or not one sees this as a manifestation of a self-conscious class pursuing anincreasingly global set of interests,21 there is plainly a transnational dimension tocontemporary processes of governance that may favour some nationally-based elitesmore than others, without necessarily being unambiguously under the direct controlof any of them.22 This is an especially challenging possibility for those state-centricinterpretations of hegemonic competition that consider it to be driven by nationally-based, competing elites, intent on promoting ‘their’ national interests. While theincreased unilateralism and militarisation of American foreign policy serves as asalutary reminder that – in the context of national security, at least – there are stillsuch parochial impulses,23 in other areas the very idea of a discrete national interest,let alone a universally supported strategy for pursuing it, is an increasinglyproblematic, socially-constructed artefact of cross-cutting political and economicinterests.24

Nevertheless, the possibility that some states are advantaged as a consequence oftheir capacity to exercise a form of ‘structural’ power that flows from their positionin the international system is central to any consideration of why some countries aremore powerful than others.25 Barnett and Duvall distinguish structural power from‘productive’ power, the latter referring to the ‘diffuse constitutive relations [that]

18 David P. Rapkin and Jonathan Strand, ‘Is East Asia under-represented in the InternationalMonetary Fund?’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 3 (2003), pp. 1–28.

19 G. John Ikenberry, ‘American power and the empire of capitalist democracy’, Review ofInternational Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 191–212.

20 Robert W. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1987); Stephen Gill, ‘Globalisation, market civilisation, anddisciplinary neoliberalism’, Millennium, 24 (1995), pp. 399–423.

21 For one of the most sophisticated expositions of this possibility, see William I. Robinson, A Theoryof Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltimore, MD: JohnHopkins University Press, 2004).

22 Craig N. Murphy, ‘Global governance: Poorly done and poorly understood’, International Affairs,76 (2000), pp. 789–803.

23 See respectively, Ivo H. Daadler and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution inForeign Policy (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2003); Andrew J. Bacevich, The New AmericanMilitarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

24 J. G. Ruggie, ‘What makes the world hang together? Neo-utilitarianism and the socialconstructivist challenge’, International Organization, 52 (1998), pp. 855–85; Philip G. Cerny,‘Globalisation, governance, and complexity’, in A. Prakash and J. A. Hart (eds), Globalization andGovernance (London; Routledge, 1999), pp. 188–212.

25 Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter Publishers, 1994).


produce the situated subjectivities of actors’.26 This distinction is useful because ithighlights a hitherto important aspect of American power, but one which has beensteadily undermined of late as a consequence of its declining legitimacy.27 While theability of American foreign policy-makers to impose or institutionalise particulareconomic and political practices has always been contested, the attractiveness of suchideas has been eroded by a growing antipathy toward American foreign policy,28 andby the emergence of competing ideas about the basis and conduct of internationalrelations. Although such processes are still in their infancy, China has begun toenunciate an alternative vision of development and international order that may helpto consolidate its own position at the centre of an emergent regional system at theexpense of the US. At the very least, such developments raise important questionsabout the nature of regional influence and highlight the limits of American primacy,despite its overwhelming strategic dominance. To explain this apparent paradox, it isuseful to initially consider the nature of the US’s material strength, before consid-ering the contradictory nature of its political and economic relations with China andthe region.

Security and geopolitics

For traditional, state-centric analyses of hegemonic power and transition, militarymight is a pivotal measure of influence and determinant of dominance.29 In thiscontext, there should be no doubt about the US’s continuing primacy. Despite theconcerns expressed by many realist scholars about the rise of China and the supposedlikelihood, if not inevitability of conflict, American ascendancy seems assured. As hasfrequently been pointed out, the US spends more on military hardware than the next15–20 powers combined. Moreover, the US has an unrivalled ability to projectpower, as well as a major and expanding lead in the technical sophistication of itsweapons systems – something many observers take to be an unambiguous andenduring expression of America’s continuing dominance.30 And yet, it is not obviousthat this military strength is as decisive as it once was, or that the ability of othercountries like China to challenge American dominance should be judged exclusivelyor even primarily by their ability to counter conventional military might. On thecontrary, it is possible that the nature of contemporary international relations, inwhich the declining incidence and utility of traditional inter-state conflict is such anoteworthy part,31 may be opening a political space within which to challengeAmerican primacy with comparative impunity – especially where this is reinforcedwith other, increasingly relevant and utilisable forms of structural power.

26 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (eds), Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005), p. 12.

27 Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, ‘The sources of American legitimacy’, ForeignAffairs, 83 (2004), pp. 18–32.

28 See, America’s Image Slips, But Allies Share US Concerns Over Iran, Hamas (Washington: PewResearch Center, 2006) Available at: ⟨http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=252⟩.

29 Douglas Lemke, Regions of War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).30 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, ‘American primacy in perspective’, Foreign Affairs,

81 (2002), pp. 20–33.31 John E. Mueller, Retreat From Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic

Books, 1989); Raimo Vayrynen (ed.), The Waning of Major War (London: Routledge, 2006).

100 Mark Beeson

When trying to assess how important military power is, much depends on thespecific historical context. Here the US’s record in East Asia is uneven andcontradictory. At one level, it is plain that, despite not being ‘of’ the region in the waythat China unambiguously is, the US exercised a decisive, continuing influence on thedevelopment of East Asia for more than half a century. The construction of thebilateral strategic relationships in East Asia noted earlier, was not only markedlydifferent from the its approach to Europe (where it encouraged a process of regionalintegration), but the effective maintenance of an ‘uneasy stalemate’ in a divided EastAsia was a key part of its own hegemonic role.32 Consequently, while the Cold Warendured, there was simply no possibility that China could play a significant part inregional relations, let alone seek to reinsert itself at the centre of an increasinglyintegrated East Asia.

The cornerstone of American strategy in the region during this period was notsimply ‘containing’ China, but consolidating the position of Japan as an economicand strategic bulwark against communist expansion.33 Two aspects of the relation-ship between the US and Japan have long-term implications for both the US’srelationship with China and our understanding of hegemony, and consequently meritspelling out. First, Japan’s historically subordinate role to the US and its consequentinability to play an independent, leadership role in East Asia, help to explain thestunted nature of its own hegemonic ambitions and capacities throughout thepost-war period. Japan’s recent participation in American strategic initiatives likethe missile defence scheme and the recently announced defence treaty with America’sother key regional ally Australia, not only limit Japan’s own policy autonomy, butare plainly designed with China in mind.34 The second point to make, then, isthat – at the strategic level, at least – the US remains the lynchpin of an entrenchedpattern of security relations that notionally disadvantage and constrain China. Andyet, it is striking that, not only are the benefits of such ‘bandwagoning’ behaviour bycountries such as Japan and Australia increasingly unclear, especially as they limit thepossibility of developing a more independent relationship with the region, butAmerican strategy may also actually work to China’s advantage.35

The limits to military dominance

The possibility that inter-state warfare is not simply increasingly redundant but acounter-productive contributor to hegemonic decline is confirmed by America’s ownexperiences. Although most recent attention has focused on the ‘fiasco’ in Iraq,36 it

32 Michael Mastanduno, ‘Incomplete hegemony and security order in the Asia-Pacific’, in G. J.Ikenberry (ed.), America Unrivalled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2002), pp. 141–70.

33 Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York:Oxford University Press, 1997).

34 Richard Tanter, ‘The New American-led Security Architecture in the Asia Pacific: Binding Japanand Australia, containing China’, Australian, 13 March 2007. Japan Focus, 17 March 2007.

35 Mark Beeson, ‘The declining theoretical and practical utility of ‘bandwagoning’: Americanhegemony in the age of terror’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9 (2007),pp. 618–35.

36 Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Allen Lane, 2006).


is worth remembering why so many make a comparison with America’s earlierexperience in Vietnam. Not only did Vietnam have a massive negative impact on theUS domestically, but it also inaugurated – for a generation, at least – a period ofdiminished ambitions and a greater reluctance to intervene overseas generally and inEast Asia in particular. Equally importantly as far as the US’s overall hegemonicposition was concerned, Vietnam sapped America’s own economic strength, whilesimultaneously allowing its competitors in Europe and Asia to catch up. Indeed, oneof the great ironies and contradictions of America’s preoccupation with grandstrategy was that it was instrumental in cultivating successful capitalist economieslike Japan, which would ultimately have an ambivalent impact on its own economicposition.37 History seems to be repeating itself. As Arrighi observes, ‘all the evidenceseems to point to China as the real winner of the War on Terrorism whether ornot the US eventually succeeds in breaking the back of al Qaeda and the Iraqiinsurgency’.38

Much has been written about the ill-judged intervention in Iraq and the sort ofAmerican foreign policy that underpinned it.39 At first blush, such folly seems toconfirm Kolko’s observation that ‘thinking about war in official circles and amongthose strategic analysts attached to them, not only in the United States but elsewhere,has remained remarkably impervious to experience’.40 But such a blanket assertionoverlooks important differences in the way security is perceived and pursued,differences that have been especially sharply drawn in East Asia. The widely noted‘comprehensive’ nature of security in much of East Asia, which embraces economicand diplomatic practices, and which has political survival and regime maintenance atits core,41 was pioneered by Japan and has been embraced by China, too.42 For thepolitical leadership of the PRC, economic security is arguably at least as importantas conventional sovereignty: without continuing rapid development the legitimacy ofthe extant regime will be increasingly called into question with potentially fatalconsequences.43 In such circumstances, we should not be surprised if China’s strategiccalculus looks rather different from the universalised expectations that inform muchstrategic thinking in North America.

What is surprising, perhaps, is how much Chinese strategic thinking seems tohave in common with the US, despite their very different circumstances. Johnstonhas detailed the continuity of realist thinking in Chinese military strategy,44 andit is plainly the expectations about state behavior that flow from such zero-sum

37 Stubbs, Rethinking.38 Giovanni Arrighi,, ‘Hegemony unravelling-2’, New Left Review, 33 (2005), p. 115.39 On Iraq, see George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss and

Giroux, 2005). On the recent ‘revolution’ in US foreign policy, see Daadler and Lindsay, AmericaUnbound.

40 Gabriel Kolko, Century of War (New York: New Press, 1994), p. 464.41 Muthiah Alagappa, ‘Asian practice of security: Key features and explanations’, in Muthiah

Alagappa (ed.), Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1998), p. 625.

42 Richard W. Hu, ‘China in search of comprehensive security’, in J. C. Hsiung (ed.), Twenty-FirstCentury World Order and the Asia Pacific (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 309–25.

43 Yongnian Zheng and Liang Fook Lye, ‘Political legitimacy and reform in China: Betweeneconomic performance and democratization’, in Lynn White (ed.), Legitimacy: Ambiguities ofPolitical Success or Failure in East and Southeast Asia (New Jersey: World Scientific, 2005),pp. 183–214.

44 Alastair I. Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

102 Mark Beeson

perspectives that inform much thinking about China in the US.45 What is equallystriking, however, is that despite high profile criticisms of Chinese defence spending,it remains relatively modest, and is likely to remain a fraction of America’s despitethe growth of the Chinese economy.46 True, China’s defence spending has grown asits economy expands, but what is more important is the quality of its military, whichremains no match for the US. As David Shambaugh has pointed out, China is twentyyears behind the US in terms of technological sophistication and the gap is growing,causing China’s strategists to develop a ‘new security concept’ that privileges ‘soft’over ‘hard’ power, and which is aimed squarely at China’s regional neighbours.47

Despite the attention that Taiwan continues to receive as a supposed regional‘flashpoint’, it is evident that its military leaders recognise that China would facecertain defeat.48 It is, of course, always possible that miscalculation, accidentor – most plausibly, perhaps – the sort of nationalist sentiment that is alreadyproving a headache for China’s leaders,49 could trigger a conflict between the US andChina, but it seems more likely that the longer conflict is deferred, the less likely it willbecome.50 On the one hand, this is a product of China’s own grand strategy which‘aims to avoid the provocative consequences of the more straightforward hegemonicand balancing strategies’.51 On the other, it is a function of the sort logic of economicinterdependence that liberals would expect to see, a possibility that is taken up inmore detail below. What is worth briefly noting at this stage are the sorts of initiativesthat China has undertaken in the region as a result of this recognition of its ownstrategic limitations.

‘Soft balancing’ Chinese style?

Over the last few decades there has been a steady, but remarkable change in China’sforeign and security policies. China’s elite foreign policymakers have become morenumerous, knowledgeable, and professional. Despite the fact that they are stilldedicated to pursuing the PRC’s ‘national interest’, the way such interests arediscursively constructed has affected overall policy. As David Lampton points out, insuch circumstances, ‘even narrow calculations of national interest may produce

45 See, for example, Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of thePeople’s Republic of China (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2006).

46 An authoritative report by the Rand Corporation projected that China’s defence spending wouldremain less half that of the US, even if its leaders made it a major priority, something theyconsidered unlikely given the need to continue pushing economic development and managingdemographic and social change. See, Keith Crane et al., Modernizing China’s Military:Opportunities and Constraints (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2005).

47 David Shambaugh, Modernizing China’s Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 2002).

48 Robert S. Ross, ‘Assessing the China threat’, The National Interest (Fall 2005), pp. 81–7.49 See, Peter H. Gries, China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 2004).50 Robert Ross makes the important point that, not only have Taiwan’s leaders actually become more

reluctant to acquire new weapons systems from the US with which to defend themselves againstChina, but Taiwanese business leaders and investors are effectively acting as a ‘fifth column’ as themainland assumes an ever greater economic importance to Taiwan. See Robert S. Ross, ‘Balance ofpower politics and the rise of China: Accommodation and balancing in East Asia’, Security Studies,15 (2006), pp. 355–95.

51 Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 39.


progressively more cooperative behavior’.52 Of course, such shifts in policy-makingstyle and content might be read as ‘structurally-induced’, and a consequence of anessentially realist-inspired recognition of China’s still limited international influencein the face of continuing American dominance.53 Such a possibility has been centralto the notion of ‘soft balancing’, which seeks to explain the conspicuous failure ofstates to try and off-set American strategic pre-eminence in the way that realistthinking suggests they ought.54 While there is something in this, it is also clearthat China’s evolving foreign policies reflect the cumulative influence of greaterengagement with international institutions. Put differently, China’s elites have been‘socialized’ into a new, externally-derived normative order in ways that have affectedthe PRC’s longer-term international behaviour.55 The consequences of this transfor-mation have been manifest in the increasingly sophisticated use of such institutionsand a regional ‘charm offensive’ that is designed to reduce nervousness about its riseand undermine the dominance of the US.56

A number of aspects of China’s recent engagement with the East Asian region areworth highlighting. First, and most paradoxically, perhaps, China has of latedemonstrated a greater enthusiasm for multilateral engagement than has the US,which was the architect of the very system in which China has become an increasinglyeffective part.57 The increasing preference for unilateralism on the part of the UShas been widely noted, as has its impact on the moral authority and legitimacyof American foreign policy as a consequence.58 What is equally striking, is theincreasingly skilful way China has engaged with international institutions to burnishits own credentials as a ‘responsible’ international actor, a tactic that not onlyhighlights possible American failings by contrast, but which makes it more difficultfor the US to ‘contain’ China as a result.59 Nowhere has the juxtaposition been morestark than in China’s ever closer relations with the Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN).60 Whereas the US has frequently snubbed ASEAN,61 China hasestablished a Free Trade Agreement, signed ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity andCooperation, and taken a much softer line on contentious issues like the potentiallyresource-rich Spratly Islands, over which China and a number of Southeast Asianstates have potentially competing claims.62

52 David M. Lampton, ‘China’s foreign and national security policy-making process: Is it changing,and does it matter?’, in David M. Lampton (ed.), The Making of Chinese Foreign and SecurityPolicy in the Era of Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 36.

53 Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, andFuture (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000).

54 T. V. Paul, ‘Soft balancing in the age of US primacy’, International Security, 30 (2005), pp. 46–71.55 Alastair I. Johnston, ‘Socialization in international institutions: The ASEAN way and international

relations theory’, in G. J. Ikenberry and M. Mastanduno (eds), International Relations and theAsia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 107–62.

56 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).

57 Christopher R. Hughes, ‘Nationalism and multilateralism in Chinese foreign policy: Implicationsfor Southeast Asia’, Pacific Review, 18 (2005), pp. 119–35.

58 Mark Beeson and Richard Higgott, ‘Hegemony, institutionalism and US foreign policy: Theoryand practice in comparative historical perspective’, Third World Quarterly, 26:7 (2005), pp. 1173–88.

59 Rosemary Foot, ‘Chinese strategies in a US-hegemonic global order: Accommodating and hedging’,International Affairs, 82 (2006), pp. 77–94.

60 Alice D. Ba, ‘China and Asean: Renavigating relations for a 21st-century Asia’, Asian Survey, 43(2003), pp. 622–47.

61 Sydney Morning Herald, 19 August 2005.62 AsiaTimes, 21 February 2007.

104 Mark Beeson

China’s activist diplomacy is, therefore, surprising, successful, and at odds withwhat we might expect: not only is it remarkable that the formerly prickly People’sRepublic has become an effective mainstay of East Asia’s burgeoning regionalinstitutional forums and diplomatic architecture,63 but it has done so – at leastpartly – at the expense of the US, which ought to have been better placed to benefitfrom the prevailing international order. It is significant, for example, that what mayprove to be the most important attempt to create an indigenous institutional forumwith which to manage intra-regional relations – ASEAN+364 – explicitly excludesthe US and reflects a much more narrowly defined conception of ‘East Asia’, ratherthan the all encompassing notion of an ‘Asia-Pacific’ region that has been champi-oned by the US and key allies like Australia.65 Equally importantly – and even moresurprisingly – China is beginning to exert the sort of ideological influence that wasonce thought to be the exclusive preserve of the US, and what was taken to be theinherent attractiveness, if not superiority of its political system, economic structuresand even ‘lifestyles’.66

But claims about the supposedly irresistible influence of the Anglo-Americanmodel of capitalism and the concomitant rapidity of ‘convergence’ on a neoliberaltemplate were always somewhat overstated.67 In much of East Asia, the economicand political reforms associated with the ‘Washington consensus’ have often beenregarded with ambivalence and actively resisted.68 Indeed, China’s own developmen-tal experiences are much closer to those of the ideal-typical, East Asian developmen-tal state.69 I consider some of the impacts of China’s economic transformation below,but the point to emphasise at this stage is that China is actively promoting analternative ‘Beijing consensus’, one ‘defined by a ruthless willingness to innovate andexperiment, by a lively defence of national borders and interests, and by theincreasingly thoughtful accumulation of tools of asymmetric power projection’.70

This preoccupation with pragmatism and the preservation of the state has an appealnot just in an East Asian region that has been historically concerned with protectingsovereignty, but also across other parts of the non-Western, ‘developing world’,where China is playing an increasing prominent role.71

The rather surprising success of Chinese diplomacy might seem a confirmation ofhegemonic transition, especially when combined with evidence of the apparentlyunstoppable rise of the Chinese economy. Things are more complex than they seem,

63 David Shambaugh, ‘China engages Asia’, International Security, 29 (2004/05), pp. 64–99.64 ASEAN+3 includes the Southeast Asian nations of ASEAN, plus China, Japan and South Korea.

See, Richard Stubbs, ‘ASEAN Plus Three: Emerging East Asian Regionalism?’, Asian Survey, 42(2002), pp. 440–55. Other initiatives, like the East Asian Summit, have been down-played by theASEAN+3 grouping and suffer from the same sort of potential incoherence that has plaguedAPEC.

65 Mark Beeson, ‘American hegemony and regionalism: The rise of East Asia and the end of theAsia-Pacific’, Geopolitics, 11:4 (2006), pp. 541–60.

66 Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);Ikenberry, ‘American power’.

67 Michael Mastanduno, ‘Models, markets, and power: Political economy and the Asia-Pacific,1989–1999’, Review of International Studies, 26 (2000), pp. 493–507.

68 Beeson and Islam, Resisting.69 For a more detailed discussion of this claim and of the developmental state more generally, see

Mark Beeson, Regionalism, Globalization and East Asia: Politics, Security and EconomicDevelopment (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).

70 Joshua C. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus (London: The Foreign Policy Centre, 2004), p. 4.71 See Ian Taylor, ‘China’s oil diplomacy in Africa’, International Affairs, 82 (2006), pp. 937–59.


however. When we consider the basis of China’s recent ascent – its remarkableeconomic expansion – it is not obvious whether the US or China is in the ascendant,or even whether a national, state-centric focus is the most appropriate way ofmeasuring their respective standing.

The political-economy of hegemonic transition?

Given the attention that has been paid to China’s remarkable, historically unprec-edented growth, it might be supposed that evidence of its ascension and the extent ofthe potential challenge it poses for the US might be unambiguous. In some ways, itis. Double digit average growth rates for more than two decades have transformedChina and triggered a dramatic rise in living standards, especially along its easternseaboard. But the impact of this highly uneven transformation and the spatially-realised economic and social disparities it has created, is fuelling massive internalmigration, and generating domestic instability as a result.72 The contradictory impactof wrenching economic change is one reason that assessing the significance of China’seconomic development is problematic. Another is the quality and nature of theeconomic changes themselves.

Despite the hyperbole that characterises some accounts of China’s development,there are significant grounds for caution. As Shaun Breslin points out, China’s recenteconomic development started from a very low base, and despite extraordinary,sustained growth rates, average per capita incomes still remain well below those ofRussia.73 Equally importantly, there are doubts about the long-term impact ofChina’s place in the international division of labour. The massive foreign investmentthat has been such a distinctive, important and enduring part of China’s economicdevelopment may have underpinned the scale of the transformation underway there,but it also helps to explain the often subordinate nature of China’s integration intoglobal and regional production networks.74 The rapid growth of China’s manufac-turing sector has been dominated by foreign affiliates, which account for more thanhalf of China’s overall foreign trade, of which a further half is the simple assemblyand processing of imported inputs for finished goods that will eventually exported.75

In some ways China echoes the concerns that were expressed about ‘ersatz capitalism’in Southeast Asia in earlier decades,76 although there are already signs of Chinamaking the transition to more sophisticated forms of manufacturing.77 In any case,China’s sheer size means that even a role as predominantly an export platform iscausing major economic restructuring across the entire East Asian region.

72 International Herald Tribune, 29 July 2007.73 Shaun Breslin, ‘Power and production: Rethinking China’s global economic role’, Review of

International Studies, 31 (2005), p. 736.74 The Economist, 11 January 2007.75 Guillaume Gaulier, Francoise Lemoine and Deniz Unal-Kesenci, China’s Emergence and the

Reorganisation of Trade Flows in Asia (Paris: CEPPI, 2006).76 It was thought that Southeast Asia’s role as a source of low-skill, cheap labour for foreign

multinationals would inhibit indigenous capitalist development – an idea that still has someresonance. See, Kunio Yoshihara, The Rise of Ersatz Capitalism in Southeast Asia (Quezon City:Manila University Press, 1988).

77 Financial Times, 28 August 2007.

106 Mark Beeson

A number of points are worth emphasising about China’s place in regional andglobal production networks. First – and most importantly as far as claims aboutpossible Chinese hegemony are concerned – China’s economic expansion is notcoming at the expense of its neighbours.78 On the contrary, one of the reasons thatthe region has bounced back so well from the economic crisis of the late 1990s isbecause the region – including Japan79 – has generally benefited from rapidly expand-ing trade surpluses with China. However, unlike Japan, which conspicuously failed toplay a political or economic leadership role in the region, China has been open toforeign investment.80 Recently, it has also begun to play the role of a regional growthengine, sucking in imports, establishing itself at the centre of increasingly integrated,regional production networks, and generally making the region less reliant on theUS.81

Second, despite the concern regularly expressed in the US about its expandingtrade deficit with China, it is actually American firms that are largely responsible forthe dramatic growth of ‘Chinese’ exports to the US. As Hughes points out,‘Wal-Mart alone purchased $18 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2004, making itChina’s eighth-largest trading partner – ahead of Australia, Canada and Russia’.82

Put differently, powerful economic and political actors in the US have a vestedinterest in maintaining cordial relations with an open, outward-looking China, andmaking simple calculations or depictions of ‘the national interest’ problematic as aconsequence.

Paradoxically enough, therefore, despite some doubts about the depth of China’sdevelopment process, its sheer scale is ensuring that even Japan and the US areincreasingly reliant on the Chinese economy for their own development and stability.In America’s case, this odd symbiosis has reached unexpected and potentiallydangerous proportions. While the highly visible nature of the trade relationshipgenerally captures the headlines, a growing financial interdependence is also under-mining American strength and constraining its own policy autonomy. One of themost striking and potentially unsustainable features of the contemporary inter-national economic system is the US’s massive trade deficit with China on the onehand, and China’s concomitant accumulation of the world’s largest foreign currencyreserves, on the other. China currently invests much of this very conservatively inAmerican Treasury Bills, allowing US interest rates to remain lower than they wouldbe otherwise, and consumption (of Chinese exports) to continue unabated.83 Whilethis relationship may benefit both parties in the short-term, Arrighi argues that‘adjustment will inevitably result in a further decrease of US command over worldeconomic resources, a reduction of the weight and centrality of the US market in theglobal economy, and a diminished role for the dollar as international means of

78 Despite widespread fears about the impact of China’s rise on Southeast Asia in particular,ASEAN’s exports to China continue to grow. Dominic Ziegler’, Reaching for a renaissance: Aspecial report on China and its region’, The Economist, 31 March 2007.

79 Financial Times, 5 April 2007.80 By contrast, Japan has been reluctant to open up its domestic market, something that has

undermined its regional leadership ambitions and heightened concerns about the impact of itsneo-mercantilist policies. See, Walter Hatch, and Kozo Yamamura Asia in Japan’s Embrace:Building a Regional Production Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

81 The Economist, 14 April 2007, p. 87.82 Neil C. Hughes, ‘A trade war with China?’ Foreign Affairs, 84 (2005), p. 94.83 International Herald Tribunal, 9 March 2007.


payment and reserve currency’.84 China’s growing immunity to American economicleverage has been clearly revealed by the latter’s failure to engineer a devaluation inthe yuan.85 The concern expressed by policymakers in the US about the investmentstrategies of China’s rapidly expanding sovereign wealth funds and their desire toinvest in ‘American’ financial assets is also indicative of China’s growing economicinfluence.86

The limits to Chinese power

But while China’s power is growing, it should not blind us to clear short- andlong-term constraints on its position. On the one hand, China cannot risk exploitingthe potential structural leverage that its massive dollar holdings appears to confer,lest it trigger a crisis in which it would be a major victim.87 This possibility hasbecome especially relevant following recent turmoil in global financial markets, towhich China was exposed, but which had their origins in the US – something thatmay further erode the long-term position of the American economy.88 On the otherhand, however, it is important to remember that the very fact that China has becomesuch a key player in global trade networks and financial markets is testimony to twoenduring, under-appreciated, structural and institutionalised aspects of Americanhegemony. First, the continuing size of the American economy, the importance of itsdomestic market, and (thus far, at least) the centrality of its financial institutions,mean that the US continues to benefit from its entrenched position and dominance.According to some observers, ‘financial markets have played a directly imperial role[making] it possible for the American economy to attract global savings that wouldotherwise not be available to it’.89 While there is evidence that even here Americandominance may be threatened,90 it remains a formidable force in which evenprofligacy and indebtedness may paradoxically be sources of strength.91

The second aspect of American power that has been decisive as far as US-Chinarelations are concerned is institutional and reflects its continuing influence over theIFIs.92 The fact that China has effectively abandoned socialism in all but name, andsought to join a capitalist economy dominated by the US is a ‘victory’ of long-term

84 Arrighi, ‘Hegemony’, p. 70.85 International Herald Tribunal, 4 April 2007.86 The establishment of the China Investment Corporation with $200bn to invest is indicative of this

potential, as was China’s $3bn investment in the initial public offering of Blackstone, a US privateequity group. See Financial Times, 29 July 2007.

87 This is clearly something the Chinese authorities are aware of themselves. See, Financial Times,16 March. It is also precisely the same situation Japanese policymakers confronted in the 1980s and’90s, but which they conspicuously failed to act upon. See R. T. Murphy, ‘East Asia’s dollars’, NewLeft Review, 40 (2006), pp. 39–64.

88 International Herald Tribune, 24 August 2007.89 Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, ‘Finance and American empire’, in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys

(eds), The Socialist Register: The Empire Reloaded (London: Merlin Press, 2004), p. 69.90 There is now a very real prospect that New York’s position as the centre of global finance will be

overtaken by London, something that could further erode both the influence of Wall Street and theimportance of the US dollar. See, Merril Stevenson, ‘Britannia redux: A survey of Britain, TheEconomist, 1 February 2007.

91 Leonard Seabrooke, US Power in International Finance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).92 Robert H. Wade, ‘The invisible hand of the American empire’, Ethics & International Affairs, 17

(2003), pp. 77–88.

108 Mark Beeson

historic significance as far as the US is concerned, albeit one that seems strangelyunrecognised in the debates about the ‘China threat’.93 The symbolic and practicalculmination of this process was China’s accession to the WTO, which involvedagreeing to protocols and provisions which ‘far surpass those made by the foundingmembers’.94 At one level, then, there is a seemingly unambiguous confirmation ofcontinuing American hegemony and its long-term ability to shape the internationalsystem according to its preferences that compels rivals to comply. And yet, thealacrity with which China has adapted to the new order, its ability to ‘work thesystem’, especially when combined with America’s recent unilateralism and loss oflegitimacy, all suggest that such ascendancy is not inevitable or immune fromchallenge.

Having apparently vanquished socialism, American policymakers find themselvesembroiled in a competition to define the nature and governance of capitalism itself.China’s less doctrinaire approach to development, to say nothing of the US’s ownincipient mercantilism,95 both mean that the ascendancy of neoliberalism is far fromassured: the emerging, intensified resource competition between the US andChina96 – now established as the first and second greatest consumers of oil andenergy respectively – has exposed the limits of American’s commitment to marketforces, and reinforced China’s determination to shore up its own position throughactivist diplomacy and long-term economic links.97

To some extent the US has been here before: for much of the 1980s and even intothe 1990s, Japan looked set to eclipse the US economically. Ironically, Japan was alsoable to benefit from the overarching geopolitical and institutional order theAmericans played such a large part in creating. In Japan’s case the challengeultimately fizzled out, largely as a consequence of its own political and economicfailings.98 But this time the challenge looks more formidable. All things being equal,China looks set to overtake the US in the next decade or two as the world’s largesteconomy and reinforce its growing economic and political importance to the region,to say nothing of the rest of the world. In China’s case, though, its ascendancy is notlikely to be halted by its own faltering ambitions or inept diplomacy, but by politicalcrisis and the simple carrying capacity of the planet.

The legitimacy of China’s political leadership is increasingly dependent oneconomic development, which while it has been spectacular, remains surprisinglybrittle. In addition to the social impacts noted above, concerns have been expressedabout the stability of the banking sector, particularly given its role as a source ofcontinuing credit for under-performing state-owned enterprises.99 The ability of the

93 Robert G. Sutter, China’s Rise: Implications for US Leadership in Asia. Policy Studies 21(Washington, DC: East–West Center, 2006).

94 Nicholas R. Lardy, Integrating China into the Global Economy (Washington, DC: BrookingsInstitute, 2002), p. 104.

95 In a revealing example of American attitudes, the US government refused to allow the take-overover Unocal, by China’s state-owned oil company CNOOC on national security grounds. See,Francis Schortegen, ‘Protectionist capitalists vs capitalist communists: CNOOC’s failed Unocal bidin perspective’, Asia Pacific: Perspectives, 6 (2006), pp. 2–10.

96 Brent Boekestein and Jeffrey Henderson, ‘Thirsty Dragon, Hungry Eagle: Oil Security in Sino-USRelations’, IPEG Papers in Global Political Economy, 21 (November 2005).

97 Subodh Atal, ‘The new great game’, The National Interest, 81 (2005), pp. 101–5.98 Richard Katz, Japan: The System That Soured (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).99 Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

2007).


Chinese economy to generate sufficient jobs for its still growing population remainsa central concern of a government that has a greater notional commitment to thewelfare of the proletariat than its American counterpart does.100 More fundamen-tally, perhaps, China’s transition from socialism to capitalism has been complicatedand compromised by an absence of the sort of state capacity that made Japan’searlier development so successful and sustained,101 and by an even greater relianceon patronage, corruption and the maintenance of ‘circles of compensation’ as aconsequence.102 Indeed, Minxin Pei’s gloomy, but well-grounded conclusion is thatpolitical transition will be difficult if not impossible in China, as ‘rapid short-termeconomic growth may have a perversely negative impact on democratisation becauseit provides all the incentives for the ruling elites not to seek political liberalization’.103

The final reason for questioning China’s ability to continue on its currenttrajectory and establish itself at the centre of East Asian affairs is the mostfundamental and potentially the least remediable. China’s seemingly insatiableappetite for resources, and energy,104 which has been such a key part of itsdevelopmental project, may prove increasingly difficult to satisfy – its pro-activediplomatic efforts to secure future supplies notwithstanding. Even more importantly,the attitude of generations of political elites who have seen the natural environmentas something to be systemically exploited, has meant that its own environment hasbeen devastated, to a point where ‘China’s environmental problems now have thepotential to bring the country to its knees economically’.105 The environment isalready so degraded that it has generated social disturbances among a populationwhose lives are being cut short, and whose access to basic amenities like safe drinkingwater is increasingly insecure.106 Even for those countries where the legitimacy ofpolitical elites is less dependent on economic development, and which have a greatercapacity to respond to environmental change, the challenge of environmentaladjustment is immense. In China’s case, it may prove fatal for the current incumbentsand threaten the longer-term position and integrity of the country as a whole.

Concluding remarks

The idea that a form of hegemonic transition might occur in East Asia is unlikely fora number of reasons. First, it is clear that China is not yet – and possibly may never

100 Murray S. Tanner, ‘China rethinks unrest’, Washington Quarterly, 27 (2004), pp. 137–56.101 For an insightful discussion of China’s modest state capacity in comparison with other pasts of

East Asia, see Thomas G Moore, China in the World Market: Chinese Industry and InternationalSources of Reform in the Post-Mao Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

102 This was how similar patterns of inter-locking, mutually-satisfying political, bureaucratic andbusiness elites were described in Japan, a country that highlights all that can go right and wrongwith the developmental process. See, Kent E. Calder, Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy andPublic Stability in Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

103 Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 207.

104 David Hale, ‘China’s Growing Appetites’, The National Interest, 76 (2004), pp. 137–47. But someobservers remain broadly optimistic that China can manage its energy dependence if it can achieveeffective reform and international integration. See, Tatsu Kambara and Christopher Howe, Chinaand the Global Energy Crisis: Development Prospects for China’s Oil and Gas (Edward Elgar, 2007).

105 Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 25.

106 The Guardian, 17 August 2006.

110 Mark Beeson

be – in a position to replace the US as the dominant power in the region. Not onlydoes China still lack some of the requisite material strengths of the US, but – the‘Beijing consensus’ notwithstanding – its lacks a distinctive vision or ideology aroundwhich supportive states might coalesce. Indeed, other than break-neck industrialis-ation and development, China’s ruling elite lacks a legitimating discourse with whichto win the support of its own people, something that leaves the current regime highlyvulnerable to economic downturn. And yet it is also clear that China has rapidlyreasserted itself at the centre of a more coherent and integrated East Asian regionalorder, and that its neighbours, whether they like it or not, are increasingly dependenton China for their own well-being and development. In such circumstances, China isbeginning to enjoy a degree of ‘structural’ power of a sort that has until recently beenpredominantly associated with the US. At one level, then, ‘hegemony’ is an enduringfunction of material power and economic strength, and not necessarily reliant on theactive ‘leadership’ of the dominant power. In reality, it may be an attribute attachedto more than one power and persist despite, rather than because of specific foreignpolicy initiatives. Indeed, as John Agnew argues, as far as the international politicaleconomy is concerned ‘empire American-style may be largely irrelevant to theworld-in-the-making of hegemony without a hegemon’.107

The United States’ relationship with East Asia illustrates this second possibility.The US continues to benefit from the complex array of IFIs and security relationsit helped establish in the aftermath of the Second World War, despite the fact that itsrecent foreign policy has undermined the efficacy of some of these selfsameinstitutions, and undermined support for, and the legitimacy of, many of its ownforeign policies as a consequence. And yet, despite the apparent durability ofAmerican leadership, its relationship with East Asia generally and China inparticular, suggest that this dominance is declining and may be less substantial thanit appears. America’s frequently noted ‘unipolar’ position and the strategic primacythat underpins it,108 is highly dependent on East Asian capital for its continuation.Simply put, the American economy could not operate in the way it does, nor couldthe US pursue the sorts of foreign policies it would like, without massive inflows ofcapital from East Asia. It is possible, of course, that a new administration willoverhaul America’s financial position as the Clinton administration did, and makethe US less dependent on foreign lenders. But the fact remains that its long-termposition vis-à-vis East Asia is declining, while China’s steadily improves.

Such a conclusion may be uncontroversial, but it is not entirely satisfying. Thecomplexity of the interaction between the ‘American’ and ‘Chinese’ economies alsoserves as a powerful reminder that, in the absence of outright military conflict, thesesorts of nationally-focused analyses fail to capture the increasingly integrated,interdependent nature of the economic relationship. Not only does the nature ofcontemporary trade and investment relations make them resistant to easy manage-ment in the national interest,109 but the very nature of the ‘national interest’ itself isincreasingly contested and recognised to be a socially-constructed artifact at the

107 John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia, PA: Temple UniversityPress, 2005), p. 35.

108 William C. Wohlforth, ‘The stability of a unipolar world’, International Security, 24 (1999),pp. 5–41.

109 Joseph Quinlan and Marc Chandler, ‘The US trade deficit: A dangerous obsession’, Foreign Affairs,80 (2001), pp. 87–97.


boundary of domestic-international relations.110 But thus far, at least, there is littleevidence to support the idea of a transnational class pursuing a putative commoninterest as a consequence of such interactions. Despite China’s growing participationin some of the most important international institutions of capitalist governance, theunderlying reality for China, as it is for the US, is that such agencies are usedinstrumentally and in pursuit of predominantly nationally-inspired agendas – nomatter how unrealisable or inappropriate such agendas may be at times.

Such theoretical niceties are hardly likely to interest or inhibit policymakers, ofcourse. But it is not simply the complex nature of the global economy that is likelyto render older ideas of national dominance, if not hegemony, redundant. It hasrapidly become apparent that the natural environment is a ‘security’ issue of the firstorder,111 one that threatens to derail China’s continuing development, and one thatis necessarily resistant to exclusively nationally-based solutions. Unfortunately, thereare signs that China is trying to follow the Japanese model,112 exploiting the regionalenvironment as a way of sparing its own.113 Such policies are not likely to be eitherenvironmentally or politically sustainable in the long-term. Bleak as the prospects forenvironmental sustainability in either China or East Asia currently are,114 theyhighlight the limits of realist analysis: a zero sum scramble for rapidly diminishingresources will only favour the strong for slightly longer than the weak. The only‘realistic’ response to looming environmental crisis is one that involves admittedlyunlikely forms of cooperation in a region that is synonymous with fiercely protectedsovereignty. The ability of China’s leaders to transcend national imperatives andprovide regional leadership on this issue will truly be a test of their hegemonicaspirations.

110 James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in an TurbulentWorld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

111 The Guardian, 18 April 2007.112 See, Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).113 The Independent, 19 October 2005.114 Paul Harris, Confronting Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia: Eco-politics, Foreign

Policy, and Sustainable Development (UN University Press, 2005).

112 Mark Beeson

Review of International StudiesInternational... · Hegemonic transition in East Asia? ... paradigm’s well known strengths and weaknesses.8 Robert Gilpin, perhaps the foremost exponent

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