ABSTRACT
What is this book’s argument? I submit an epistemological and a substantive argument. With respect to epistemology, I have not treated China’s rise as the analytic focus of discussion. The phenomenon of China’s growing power cannot be studied in isolation – apart from the international positions of other states, especially the U.S., and their reaction to China’s rise. Hence, I attempt to relate China’s rise to Washington’s continued preponderance in the international system. I decline to treat China’s rise as an isolated or even special case in another sense. I present historical analogies and comparisons that place China’s recent re-emergence as a major power and the implications of this re-emergence for other states in the broader context of the rise and decline experienced by its counterparts and predecessors. Therefore, I argue that one should analyze China’s situation as a case or instance of a generic class. In this inquiry, I introduce recent advances in international relations scholarship – such as rationalist and prospect theories, theories of preventive war and democratic peace, and theories of extended and pivotal deterrence – in order to inform the study of China which has tended to be dominated by Sinologists. Some colleagues who are China specialists may be puzzled by the fact that parts of this book – for example when I discuss rationalist and prospect expectations of war, and the resort to appeasement and preventive war, in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively – seem to have downplayed China’s rise. It should be obvious by now that this book is not just about China. Indeed, how can one talk about China’s rise or its potential revisionist intentions without introducing empirical evidence and analytic standards that would enable one to assess China’s capabilities and conduct in a comparative and historical context?
