ABSTRACT
A shifting balance of power is underway in Asia. It has to be stated at the outset that this chapter uses ‘power shift’ and ‘power transition’ interchangeably. As it has been indicated in the introductory chapter, power transition happens not because state A’s power is taken over by state B, or state C grasps power from state B, but rather because the distribution of power in the international system is uneven. States often grow at different speeds economically, militarily and politically, and this often has profound consequences both on their international status and their capabilities. Power shift results from uneven development among different countries. It often originates in the economic sphere and then spreads to the political and other domains. This is true across time and place and is almost like an ‘iron law’ of Power Transition Theory (PTT) (Organski and Kugler 1980). This law-like regularity gives rise to a changing distribution of power in a region or throughout the world and hence, seemingly, power ‘transitions’ from country to country or from region to region. This phenomenon occurs all the time in international history and becomes a permanent characteristic in world affairs. Thus, the contemporary ‘shift to the East’ and its particulars in Asia are no exception to this trend.
