ABSTRACT

China’s rise, US-Sino relations and US management of alliance relation-

ships have become increasingly critical factors in shaping a new power configuration in East Asia, and they will continue to be the case in the first

quarter of the twenty-first century. The United States wants to make clear

that it maintains preponderance over the countries in the region, including

China, Japan, the two Koreas and Taiwan. A re-emerging China may con-

tinue to challenge the Pax Americana in its backyard. And China’s ‘‘peace-

ful rise’’ or, more recently, its ‘‘peaceful development’’ may pose a serious

threat to the US national interest, or it may bring great benefits to the

Americans as well as the Chinese. There are two schools of thought, realists and liberals, who project dif-

ferent pictures of the future security complex of East Asia. As Joseph S.

Nye Jr. aptly points out, it will be ‘‘important not to mistake analysts’ the-

ories for reality’’.1 In other words, for various reasons that will be explained

later, the United States and China may not need to ‘‘engage in an intense

security competition with considerable potential for war’’, as realist strate-

gists like to portend. Neither economic interdependence nor other socio-

cultural networks in East Asia will automatically mitigate the instability inherent in the US-China rivalry, as liberal strategists like to envision. A

more-or-less ‘‘straight line’’ projection of the future courses of the two

hegemonic powers by these realists and liberals alike leaves little room for a

middle-of-the-road projection that is characterized by an upward spiral of

rising and falling tensions, heading towards an improved long-term rela-

tionship after a short-to mid-term confrontation.