"China’s Rise, Institutional Balancing, And (Possible) Peaceful Order Transition In The Asia Pacific" - By CWP Alum Kai He
Challenging a popular view that China’s rise will lead the United States and China to fall into the ‘Thucydides trap’—a possible hegemonic war between the two—this paper proposes an ‘institutional peace’ argument, suggesting that the ongoing international order transition will be different from previous order transitions in history. Instead of using military means to change the international order, China and the United States have relied on various institutional balancing strategies to compete with one another for an advantageous position in the future international order. The discussion on the institutional competition between China and the US around the AIIB and the ARF-related multilateral security architecture supports the ‘institutional peace’ argument: institutional competition in the form of institutional balancing strengthens the dynamics and utility of international institutions, encourages states to offer new public goods, and could lead to a more peaceful order transition in the international system. However, this institutional peace argument is constrained by two caveats: the continued validity of the MAD nuclear deterrence and a limited degree of ideological antagonism between the US and China.
Published online: 13 May 2022 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2022.2075439 -
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09512748.2022.2075439?journalCode=rpre20
Kai He is Professor of International Relations and Director, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, Australia. He is a visiting Chair Professor of International Relations at the Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, China (2018-2020). He is currently an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow (2017-2020). He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program (2009-2010).
He is the author of Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacific: Economic Interdependence and China's Rise (Routledge, 2009), Prospect Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis in the Asia Pacific: Rational Leaders and Risky Behavior (co-authored with Huiyun Feng, Routledge, 2013), and China’s Crisis Behavior: Political Survival and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2016). He is a co-editor (with Huiyun Feng) of US-China Competition and the South China Sea Disputes (Routledge, 2018).His peer-refereed articles have appeared in European Journal of International Relations, European Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Review of International Studies, Security Studies, International Studies Review, International Politics, Cooperation and Conflict, Contemporary Politics, Asian Survey, The Pacific Review, Journal of Contemporary China, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Asian Security, Asian Perspective, Australian Journal of Political Science, Australian Journal of International Relations, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Issues and Studies, Strategic Studies Quarterly, and East Asia.
He received several internationally competitive fellowships and grants, including the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2010), a Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Research Fellowship (2009-2010), an EAI fellowship (2011-2012) from the East Asia Institute in Seoul, an Asia Studies Fellowship (2012) from the East-West Center in Washington D.C., and visiting fellowships (2014/2017) from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a policy-oriented research grant from the Korea Foundation, South Korea. His current research projects are funded by the MacArthur Foundation, USA (2016-2018) and Australian Research Council (2017-2020). the Australian Research Council [grant number FT160100355] and the John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation [grant number 16-1512-150509-IPS] for their support.
Photo Credit:
- By user:shakko - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5573987
- https://pixabay.com/users/clker-free-vector-images-3736/
- https://pixabay.com/users/webflippy-4118600/
