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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.
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C&WP alumni Joel Wuthnow recently participated in a NBC News “Meet the Press Reports” episode featuring a US-China war game in a Taiwan scenario in 2027. The episode, hosted by Chuck Todd and organized by friends at CNAS, helps explain the risks of escalation as well as the need for improved deterrence. The episode is available for free streaming on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qYfvm-JLhPQ
Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National for Strategic Studies at NDU. His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, U.S.-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. In addition to his duties in INSS, he also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
His recent books and monographs, all from NDU Press, include The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (2021, lead editor), System Overload: Can China's Military Be Distracted in a War over Taiwan? (2020), Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms (2019, co-editor), and China's Other Army: The People's Armed Police in an Era of Reform (2019). His research has also appeared in journals such as Asia Policy, Asian Security, The China Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Strategic Studies, and in edited volumes.
Prior to joining NDU, Dr. Wuthnow was a China analyst at CNA, a postdoctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at The Brookings Institution. His degrees are from Princeton University (A.B., summa cum laude, in Public and International Affairs), Oxford University (M.Phil. in Modern Chinese Studies), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in Political Science). He is proficient in Mandarin.
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The Ukraine war has entered its third month with no diplomatic resolution in sight. Despite this, some have argued that while the war will have an impact on Russia, its neighbours, and the rest of Europe, it will have little consequence for Asia or the global order. This is wishful thinking at best, and shortsightedness at worst. The Ukraine crisis is not simply about the European security order. It has huge ramifications for the future of order in Asia. And by extension, given that Asia comprises nearly 60% of the world’s population and 32% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it also has enormous ramifications for the future of global security and the economy.
There is little doubt that the Ukraine war will, and already has, changed the nature of politics in Europe. Most notably, Germany has reversed decades of post-World War II foreign policy. It has announced that it will build up its military (jettisoning its reluctance to invest in its military), look for alternative energy supplies (mitigating dependence on Russian oil and gas), and most recently, even supply heavy weaponry to Ukraine (an act it had resisted until this month).
But the impact of Ukraine will not be confined to Europe. If this war drags on, economically, politically, and diplomatically, Asia and the Asian political order will change. Some of these changes have already taken place.
Updated on May 12, 2022
Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a monthly columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.
Miller is currently on leave from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University where she is a tenured associate professor of international relations, and the director of the Rising Powers Initiative at the Pardee Center. She has been a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a fellow at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, a visiting associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed and policy journals, and chapters in edited books. She serves on the international advisory board of Chatham House's International Affairs journal, and her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from multiple institutions. Miller received a BA from the University of Delhi, an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a post-doctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University.
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For its first 65 years, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rarely ventured beyond Asia. Although Chinese troops surged across the Korean, Indian, and Vietnamese borders at times during the Cold War and prepared to take Taiwan by force, they had neither the capabilities nor a compelling rationale to deploy to more distant regions. Yet beginning in the 1990s and accelerating in the 21st century, the PLA has been out and about more widely in several contexts: UN peacekeeping missions, antipiracy operations off the Horn of Africa, and ad hoc relief missions in places such as Libya and Yemen.
In Protecting China’s Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy, Andrea Ghiselli explains this shift as deriving first from China’s changing role in the world—protecting the lives and property of Chinese citizens who had “gone out” in search of new markets prompted civilian leaders to call on the PLA to be able to do more abroad. But the PLA was not initially sold on the idea. Organizations take time to adopt new missions and sometimes need a shock to stimulate deeper structural and cultural changes. Ghiselli provides convincing evidence that the 2011 Libyan Civil War, which required the PLA to repatriate some 36,000 citizens, served as a pivotal wake-up call (pp. 58–59). Spurred to action, the PLA developed new contingency plans, capabilities, training regimes, and institutions for overseas missions.
Re-engineering the PLA’s identity as an expeditionary force was an easier sell for some branches than others. Ghiselli points to bureaucratic interests to explain why the PLA Navy embraced what Hu Jintao referred to as “new historic missions,” including the protection of sea lanes, even before the Libya crisis: missions in the “far seas” required larger ships and budgets (p. 56). The ground forces, by contrast, were more skeptical. I recall a PLA officer remarking that there were at best mixed feelings within the
Wuthnow, Joel. Asia Policy; Seattle Vol. 17, Iss. 2, (Apr 2022): 156-159. - https://www.proquest.com/openview/4abb1481749f4031dee0fc7532f3ed18/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2036314
Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National for Strategic Studies at NDU. His research areas include Chinese foreign and security policy, Chinese military affairs, U.S.-China relations, and strategic developments in East Asia. In addition to his duties in INSS, he also serves as an adjunct professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
His recent books and monographs, all from NDU Press, include The PLA Beyond Borders: Chinese Military Operations in Regional and Global Context (2021, lead editor), System Overload: Can China's Military Be Distracted in a War over Taiwan? (2020), Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms (2019, co-editor), and China's Other Army: The People's Armed Police in an Era of Reform (2019). His research has also appeared in journals such as Asia Policy, Asian Security, The China Quarterly, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Strategic Studies, and in edited volumes.
Prior to joining NDU, Dr. Wuthnow was a China analyst at CNA, a postdoctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at The Brookings Institution. His degrees are from Princeton University (A.B., summa cum laude, in Public and International Affairs), Oxford University (M.Phil. in Modern Chinese Studies), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in Political Science). He is proficient in Mandarin.
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As war continues in Ukraine, many U.S. analysts fear both Russia’s adventurist and autocratic playbook and the lessons China will draw from it. But for India, a major U.S. partner, the war in Ukraine is playing out differently. Ukraine risks distracting from the rise of China and, at worst, bolstering it.
Much has been written about India’s relationship with Russia and how that affects its position on Ukraine, but the analysis of India’s positions in the conflict are incomplete without taking into account the history of India’s relationship with China. India and China’s historic border dispute is central to understanding their contemporary relations and India’s preferences on the Ukraine war’s outcome.
In the 1950s, as post-colonial independent nations, India and China had forged friendly ties based on their common opposition to imperialism. But these ties frayed as disagreements over their border surfaced. The 1960 border negotiations between Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru revealed fundamental differences in how each side viewed the border. China viewed the border as an imperialist fabrication drawn by the then British empire. Zhou wondered at the time why India, an anti-colonial country, did not reject the premise of the China-India border as an irrelevant colonial legacy. Unlike Zhou, Nehru regarded modern India as the legitimate successor to the British Indian government which had simply formalized historical borders that, in his description, had “existed since millennia.”
Manjari Chatterjee Miller is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a research associate in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. An expert on India, China, South Asia, and rising powers, she is the author of Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power (2021) and Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (2013). Miller is also the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020), a monthly columnist for the Hindustan Times, and a frequent contributor to policy and media outlets in the United States and Asia.
Miller is currently on leave from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University where she is a tenured associate professor of international relations, and the director of the Rising Powers Initiative at the Pardee Center. She has been a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a fellow at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, a visiting associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed and policy journals, and chapters in edited books. She serves on the international advisory board of Chatham House's International Affairs journal, and her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from multiple institutions. Miller received a BA from the University of Delhi, an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a post-doctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University.
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According to popular accounts, China’s international influence is increasing with its growing material capabilities. However, researchers repeatedly demonstrate gaps between China’s power and its influence. Building on earlier research, we propose an inclusive approach to conceptualizing China’s influence abroad. Our approach conditions China’s net influence on three dimensions. First, intentionality distinguishes between intentional influence-seeking and influence that accrues unintentionally via influence externalities. Second, a systematic treatment of Chinese intermediaries–the diverse set of substate actors operating overseas–is needed in order to expand the study of Chinese influence beyond state-level behavior. Finally, domestic institutions in host countries are essential conduits for conditioning how the behavior of Chinese actors, as well as group and individual reactions within host countries, are aggregated up to the policy level.
Courtney J. Fung, Enze Han, Kai Quek & Austin Strange (2022): Conditioning China’s Influence: Intentionality, Intermediaries, and Institutions, Journal of Contemporary China, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2022.2052436 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2022.2052436
Courtney J. Fung is Associate Professor in the Department of Security Studies & Criminology at Macquarie University. She is concurrently Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University and also Associate Fellow in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House, and is on the editorial board of Contemporary Security Policy and Australian Journal of International Affairs. Her research examines how rising powers address the norms and provisions for global governance and international security, with an empirical focus on China.
Dr. Enze HAN is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration. His research interests include ethnic politics in China, China's relations with Southeast Asia, especially with Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand, and the politics of state formation in the borderland area between China, Myanmar and Thailand. Dr. Han received a Ph.D in Political Science from the George Washington University in the United States in 2010. Afterwards he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University. During 2015-2016, he was a Friends Founders' Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. In 2017, he was a fellow at the East Asia Institute in Seoul, South Korea. His research has been supported by the Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and British Council/Newton Fund. Prior to Hong Kong, Dr. HAN was Senior Lecturer in the International Security of East Asia at SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom.
Assistant professor: Austin Strange is Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. He researches and teaches Chinese foreign policy, international political economy, and international development. Austin's current research focuses on China's past and present roles in the world economy, with an emphasis on China's relations with developing countries.
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The recent announcement of a new security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands has rattled leaders in Washington, Canberra, and other Indo-Pacific capitals who fear it opens the door to a Chinese military presence in the southern Pacific. Much of the attention has been on the deal’s potential to lead to a Chinese military base on the island nation, and the power-projection capabilities the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would gain as a result. But the new pact raises another critical question that has received less attention: is China is reentering the business of militarily propping up friendly regimes?
While Beijing is no stranger to serving as an economic and diplomatic lifeline to close partners, it has largely eschewed providing direct security assistance to other states since the second half of the Cold War, for both pragmatic and principled reasons. Although it remains to be seen how precisely Beijing and Honiara will operationalize their new security pact, a looming question is whether this agreement will prove to be an exception or if it heralds the rise of a more activist China that is now willing to extend military support to other states in its concerted
Patricia M. Kim Friday, May 6, 2022 - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/05/06/does-the-china-solomon-islands-security-pact-portend-a-more-interventionist-beijing/
Patricia M. Kim is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings and holds a joint appointment to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. She is an expert on Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and U.S. alliance management and regional security dynamics in East Asia.
Previously, Kim served as a China specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she focused on China's impact on conflict dynamics around the world and directed major projects on U.S.-China strategic stability and China's growing presence in the Red Sea region. She was also a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, International Security Program Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program at Princeton University.
Kim’s writing and research has been featured widely in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The South China Morning Post. She frequently briefs U.S. government officials in her areas of expertise and has testified before the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade.
Kim received her doctoral degree from the Department of Politics at Princeton University and her bachelor's degree with highest distinction in political science and Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Korean, and proficient in Japanese. Kim is also a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Is China’s deal with the Solomon Islands another sign that it is growing more influential in the South Pacific? The bilateral security cooperation agreement signed in April reflects Beijing’s longtime engagement with and growing influence in the South Pacific. Since President Xi Jinping took office, the Chinese government has twice elevated China’s diplomatic partnership with the region. Eight countries in the region are China’s comprehensive strategic partners, the highest classification of diplomatic partnership in China’s foreign relations. Top Chinese officials have frequently visited the region, with Xi attending summits there in 2014 and 2018.
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2023).