Author: Philippa Jones, China Policy

China places culture at the forefront of policy: it is an essential component of political arrangements and should be thought of as an abbreviated term for the complex of history, institutions and social relationships that come down from the past.

Culture is far from a decoration on the fringe of public affairs.   Read more…

Author: Hugh White, ANU

Although he’s confident that Asia’s present regional order and institutions will keep Asia peaceful and harmonious as China’s power grows, Amitav Acharya does acknowledge that adjustments will be needed.

The question, then, is what kind of adjustments are required? Read more…

Author: Barry Eichengreen, UC Berkeley

Everyone by now has grown accustomed to, if not physically weary of, articles extolling China’s economic dynamism and rehearsing America’s decline.

While the US is only starting to recover from its most serious recession in nearly 80 years, China glided through the global financial crisis largely unscathed. Read more…

Author: Gunter Dufey, Nanyang Technological University

There is a great deal of speculation around the rise of China’s economy and the eventual changes this will supposedly bring to the international monetary system.

The potential for such change undoubtedly exists as the Chinese economy continues to grow and catches up with more-developed countries.  Read more…

Author: Evan A Feigenbaum, CFR

In a recent post, my CFR colleague, Liz Economy asks: ‘What will Vice President Biden find in China?’ I thought I’d try out my own response to this very direct question.

First, Biden will find a China whose rise depends on economic growth but whose growth model is no longer sustainable.  Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF

There is a palpable nervousness in the security communities in countries around the region about China’s rise and what it means strategically.

To those who have lived through the early phases of the Cold War, the mood is frankly a mite scary, and without substantial rational base. Read more…

Author: Amitav Acharya, American University

The escalating regional tensions over territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS) have revived two crucial questions facing Asia’s strategic future: whether China is pursuing a ‘Monroe Doctrine’ over its neighbourhood, including the SCS area; and how far China’s neighbours can go in acquiescing to its rising power.

The Monroe Doctrine was first enunciated in 1823 by then-US President James Monroe as the policy of a rising US forbidding European powers to either colonise or interfere in the affairs of states in the Western Hemisphere. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine was to deny the Latin American and Caribbean region to European powers, and establish US regional hegemony. Read more…

Author: Raoul Heinrichs, ANU

In 500 years or so, when the next Paul Kennedy sets out to trace the rise and fall of great powers since the end of the Cold War, a good part of the opening chapter might well be devoted to the contradictions of US primacy. There’ll be plenty to choose from.

But perhaps the most vexing, and certainly the most consequential, is the way that US primacy — an order built on the indomitable power of the US and designed to entrench American dominance — facilitated the rise of a powerful and dissatisfied China, a peer competitor whose growing power would threaten the foundations of US primacy itself.  Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU

There is no question more central to the future of political stability and security in Asia and the Pacific than how the rise of Chinese power is managed alongside the established power of the United States of America. Over the last few years, Hugh White has made an immensely important contribution by forcing us all to think about this question. The central issue for White is whether it is possible to construct an arrangement whereby the new powers in Asia, most prominently China, can engage with the established power, the United States, as the structure of regional power undergoes dramatic change. The answer to this question is vital to the future of regional political stability in the intrinsically unstable process of transition in the balance of regional political power.

In the political sphere, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made focus on this issue an international political mission. Read more…

Author: Hugh White, ANU

Asia’s security and Australia’s future depend not just on the choices China might make, but on America’s choices too. Even if China overtakes it economically over the next few decades, the US will remain the second-strongest country in the world for a long time to come, and by far the most serious constraint on Chinese power. The way America chooses to use its power is as important as anything China decides, and America’s choices may be harder than China’s.

A peaceful new order in Asia to accommodate China’s growing power can only be built if America is willing to allow China some political and strategic space. Such concessions do not often happen. Read more…

Authors: Yiping Huang and Bijun Wang, Peking University

Despite its extraordinary growth performance during the past decades, China’s structural risks have also increased significantly.  Premier Wen and other senior leaders have repeatedly emphasised that the existing growth pattern is unstable, unbalanced and unsustainable.

One of the most widely identified imbalance problems is the rising share of investment in GDP, which increases the risk of excess capacity and low returns. Read more…

Author: Yanrui Wu, UWA

After three decades of rapid growth, the Chinese economy is now at a crossroads, heading towards the next phase of development. While China’s economic growth has indeed been phenomenal, it has also been resource intensive and environmentally damaging.

For high growth to be sustained in the coming decades, the role of technological progress has to be boosted. This can either occur through technology transfer flows from abroad, or through indigenous innovation. While the former has been widely discussed, the latter has largely been under-documented. Read more…

Author: Nitin Pai, Takshashila Institution

The Global Times, a newspaper owned by the People’s Daily, often acts as an unofficial mouthpiece for the Communist Party of China. Last month, it devoted an astonishing half of its  editorials to threatening the US, South Korea, Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries in response to their perceived challenges to China in the Western Pacific. The strident criticism concluded with a thinly veiled threat: ‘China’s long-term strategic plan should never be taken as a weak stand. While [it] is clear that military clashes would bring bad results to all countries in the region involved, China will never waive its right to protect its core interest with military means.’

The editors of the Global Times do not speak for themselves. Read more…

Author: John Hemmings, RUSI

The sinking of the Cheonan, recent actions by the United States and South Korea, and reaction by China will provide some difficult questions for states of the Asia Pacific region, and the international community to resolve.

Senior security and defence officials in the US were left mulling over a recent decision to deploy the aircraft carrier USS George Washington for joint exercises with South Korean naval and air forces, intended to sooth Seoul and caution Pyongyang, after the sinking of South Korean frigate Cheonan in March this year.  Initially, the carrier was to deploy to the Yellow Sea, but under Chinese pressure, the US decided to hold the exercises in the Sea of Japan (known in Korea as the East Sea). Read more…

Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, CFR

Is there a more interesting place these days than the South China Sea? It’s the locus of a full-contact diplomatic spat between Washington and Beijing. It’s an arena for some nasty finger-pointing between Beijing and Hanoi. It’s an issue that may well  destabilise relations between Beijing and Jakarta. And it’s the issue that somehow managed to make Asia’s most lethargic regional organisation—the ASEAN Regional Forum—a bit more interesting at last month’s ministerial in Hanoi.

But here’s something else that strikes me about the South China Sea: It’s going to be an arena that tests some important assumptions about China’s rise. Read more…