2.1: International Structure: Realism and Constructivism

[MUSIC]

Hi, welcome back to Chinese politics, part two.

In the last module I emphasized China's opening up to the outside world and

how the world was coming into China through that process.

Today's module we'll focus much more on China's changing relations with

the world and how it has been going out into the world since about 2000,

since China actually joined the WTO.

Now, Xi Jinping has really been changing Chinese foreign policy in rhetoric,

tone and in substance since he took over in 2012.

But even before that,

we saw some significant changes in the decade before that.

For many years, China followed Deng Xiaoping's dictum,

his idea to lay low, and hide ones capabilities.

The idea being don't let the world see that you're getting stronger and

just build up as you can.

But Xi has now decided that China's capabilities suffice to step

out of the shadows and assert China's interests more forcefully.

Xi, soon after coming to power raised this idea of his China dream.

The idea that this would involve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

So he's been very active in this way and

he feels strong with the China should be treated As the great power that it is.

And therefore, China should reassert its rightful position in the world and

not be so passive.

He's now put less emphasis on abiding,

following the rules of the liberal economic order.

Which was established by the US after World War II and he's putting more

emphasis on molding the international order to match China's interests.

And according to Hong Kong's pro mainland newspaper

Wen Hui Bao in an article published in January 2016,

China they argue, has become a system designer.

Now to put this all into perspective, to put China's rise

into a perspective I think it's important to think about two points.

One is, I want to talk a little bit about realism.

Realism is a theory of international relations that assumes that nations live

in a state of anarchy, that because there is no world government or

there is no world police, each state must think of ways to protect itself.

And states can enhance their security and

reduce these threats by several strategies.

One is internal balancing.

What that means is developing national power.

Developing your economy and building up your military.

A second strategy is what's called, external balancing.

Which means you make treaties, or alliances, and maybe you try and

balance your position with other states around the world.

The third Is bandwagoning and bandwagoning really means yielding to dominant,

global or regional power and sort of running over to them and saying take care

of me, I'll follow you whatever you want me to do I'll do it for you.

That's the idea of bandwagoning.

Now, another thing about the states having these choices is when states make these

choices, they also look at the world around them.

And they have to decide what's the shape of the international system.

And we think of that in terms of is it both multipolar,

where there's lots of, maybe, four, five big, powerful states.

Is it bipolar, where there's really only two strong powers?

That's the way it was during the Cold War between the US And the USSR.

Or you could have a hegemonic system, and

that means one state is just stronger than all the rest, right?

It's just that much stronger.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,

the US had what everyone now calls its unipolar moment, right:?

Where it was the hegemon.

Its major opponent, its major challenger disappeared, the Soviet Union collapsed,

and the world went from being bipolar to unipolar, right Hegemonic.

And so the United States dominated the world and

asserted its interests with very little opposition from around the world.

And interestingly, Deng's idea to lay low and hide ones capacities

makes perfect sense in the 1990s when the United States once so dominant.

But, now we've seen over the last 15 years, right?

Really, since China joined the WTO that it's just ascended rapidly, right?

And we can no longer talk about the international structure,

the international system of just a reigning hegemon of just one big power.

But in fact the world is now composed of this big power, this reigning hegemon but

it's facing a rising challenger, and that rising challenger is China.

Now, these kinds of power transitions, this is a theory

put forward actually by my professor Ken Organski who used to teach at Michigan.

But written up if you want to read about it, Taemin and

Coogler have some very good articles that are easy to read.

They present and discuss what's called the power transition theory.

And the power transition theory is actually a problem

because it argues that war is possible for two reasons.

One, the Hegemone.

He's sitting up there, and he sees this challenger coming.

And so he decides to cut the challenger down to size and goes to war.

And he does that before the challenger is so

strong that he won't be able to defeat it, right?

So that's one option.

The other option is that the challenger,

being worried that the hegemon is likely to attack him, may look around and

say are there other powers that don't like this hegemon.

Let's gang up together and let's try and bring the hegemon down.

In either case, you can get a world war.

Now, American officials in the government,

in the military, many of them subscribe to this theory of realism, right?

So they believe that the United States must increase its defense spending,

strength and its own capabilities and contain China.

Otherwise it will lose its preeminence.

And if it loses its preeminence and

the power transition still happens then war is likely.

Now, in 2008 we had the global financial crisis, and

the Chinese had their own perceptions of this transition, of this power transition.

And some of the people in the military and some civilian analysts in China think that

yes the US still remains dominant but the world is undergoing a power transition.

And that China, beginning from 2008 and over the next 20 to 30 years may be

able to surpass the United States in national power, not just in the economy.

And in their view and perhaps in the view of Xi Jinping,

China as this rapidly rising power

should be more assertive in supressing its cases, in pressing its interests.

Vis a vis everybody else in the world and

maybe even relative to the United States putting greater pressure out there.

And some Chine analysts believe in fact, and

I think they're wrong, that the transition has already happened.

And so these people are sitting there in China, pushing for the use of force

when there are territorial disputes in the neighboring waters.

Some of those disputes being with the United States and they're pushing maybe

even to start confronting the United States much more forcefully.

Although China argues that it is rising peacefully, shifts in the global

distribution of power undermine many states ability to protect themselves.

So the must react, and they see that China, simply by rising so

quickly, is really destabilizing the international system.

Even if it doesnt' seek to threaten these other states, but it really causes them,

these states in East Asia to strengthen their defense ties with the United States.

These states including the US wonder if China is actually a dissatisfied

rising power and therefore will use it's power to threaten them or

will it cooperate with the United States and

other states in maintaining the current global economic order.

Many indicators suggest that China is in fact

a system re-designer, not just a system designer.

Now a competing paradigm to realism called Constructivism

argues that maximizing military and

economic power cannot enhance a states security If other states do the same.

Then everybody's just trying to get stronger.

Instead, states should create international organizations and

regimes with rules, and the ability to impose sanctions to

punish those states that don't follow those rules or

norms which will then stop them from threatening the international system.

Now as a definition we can say that norms are, Regimes are norms and decision making

procedures accepted by international actors to regulate an issue area.

And by issue area, I mean things like free trade.

So you have things like the World Trade Organization, WTO.

Intellectual property rights, and here we have the Bern Convention, that

outlines what states need to do to protect their intellectual property rights and

to protect other people's, other states' intellectual property rights.

And elites and citizens must support these norms and epistemic communities,

the people in different countries who share these kinds of norms,

they must transfer those norms across the states.

Now, it's not easy for China to accept this kind of normative

invasion of its sovereignty because the century of

humiliation between 1840 and 1849, China gave up its sovereignty.

It's sovereignty was sort of stolen from it by the imperialist powers.

So China's leaders have a very hard time

giving up some sovereignty to international regimes.

And in general great powers like the United States, just dislike being subject

to other states scrutiny, or to be dragged up to international courts or tribunals.

But the good news is that China gave up sovereignty when it joined the WTO,

on some issues.

And so we know that there are Chinese officials

who actually internalize the values of transparency and free trade.

And so we hope that they can do that again.

Chinese Politics Part 2 – China and the World

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