ABSTRACT
After more than a century of struggle with economic weakness and political turmoil, China entered the twenty-first century as a rising power thanks to the progress of market-oriented economic reform. While many Western businessmen welcomed the massive economic opportunities provided by China’s rise, China’s long-term great power potential has prompted politicians in some Western capitals and Asian countries to wonder whether an increas ingly strong and assertive China would become a rational, peaceful, and pragmatic power or an irrational, bellicose, and expansionist state. Scholars and policy analysts have also taken different positions.1 Some have been alarmed and argued that the rising economic and military power of China by its own accord makes China a threat to Asian and global security because it may upset the balance of power and spark realignments in East Asia as well as the world. In particular, the neo-conservativists in the Bush administration of the United States have warned of the prospect of China emerging as a great power to challenge American predominance in the post-Cold War world and seek extended sovereignty by launching aggressive warfare against its neighbors. Neoconservatists thus have raised the oldest question in diplomacy once again: “How [can] the international community . . . manage the ambitions of a rising power [China]?”2 In contrast to this view, some other scholars have held that China is a conservative power and “in the foreseeable future it will seek to maintain the status quo.”3 China’s increasing integration into the international sys tem, evident in its growing memberships in international security regimes and economic organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), has created “constraints on its foreign conduct as well as incentives to adapt to the prevailing norms in contemporary international relations.”4 Although the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States and the subsequent war on terrorism has pushed the debate to the back burner, the issue remains and will certainly return to the forefront and confront policy-makers in the West and Asia-Pacific if the threat of terrorism somehow subsides. This policy debate coincides with the theoretical debate between realism and liberalism among international relations scholars. While the realist argument holds that a rising China will become asser tive and expansionist because, as the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) capabilities increase, its intentions will become less benign, the liberal argument believes that China’s reform and growing economic interactions with the capitalist world will make it more open and democratic, which will help to promote international stability and security. While both international relations theories have provided valuable insights, neither of them alone
is able to unravel the puzzle of whether a prosperous and powerful China will be a major force of stability or a threat to international peace.
