Superpower, China?

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• About the Authors

Soon after the turn of the 21^st century, American political scientist Kenneth Waltz wrote simply and matter-of-factly about China's upward trajectory. “China will emerge as a great power even without trying very hard”, he noted, “so long as it remains politically united and competent”. Setting aside the question as to whether or not China has tried very hard in the ensuing decade, it has indeed maintained its domestic political stability and has continued its breathtaking rise. Much is attributable to the Chinese economy. It is today the world's second-largest economy (having overtaken Japan in mid-2010). It is the world's largest trading economy, the world's second-largest destination of foreign direct investment, and the world's largest holder of foreign exchange reserves. It is also the largest manufacturer on the globe. This economic success has meant expendable income, and China is spending on another key indicator of great power status: the military. Even allowing for the large (presumed) gap between China's official defense budget and its actual defense spending, China's defense budget is second only to the United States. It also occupies a privileged position in world politics, courtesy of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Its increasing diplomatic confidence has become readily apparent in recent years, and it has proved willing to “use its veto power to constrain, shape, and sometimes derail the proposals of others, including the USA…”. Economically, militarily, and diplomatically, China is rising.

In a 1965 article entitled “The State of Economic History”, Douglass North suggested that improvements in economic organization might have been “as important as technological change in the development of the Western world between 1500 and 1830”. Although students of American economic history had drawn “broad inferences from scraps of evidence [about] the relationship between the money supply, price levels, and specie flows”, most economic historians working at the time were oblivious to incidence theory, and in some cases, spurned systematic quantitative analysis altogether. On the whole, North castigated much of the research in the field — then still heavily weighted toward the West — as much less as rigorous than the work done by economists…

With the United States losing its Sl&P “Triple-A” badge, the Eurozone teetering on the abyss, and India just not delivering the goods despite outrageously positive press, pundits weighing up the odds for a Chinese century have all had an interesting year in which to dabble in speculation. By way of corroborating evidence, even the leader of China's one-time great Eurasian benefactor, Dmitry Medvedev, weighed in; Medvedev was quoted in the party-state media back in June as acknowledging that Russia needed to emulate the Beijing's economic-reform formulae…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Wang's Major English-Language Exposé
• Mao and “New Democracy”
• Matters of History, History Matters

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• What Might China's Moral Claim to Global Leadership Look Like?
• Replacing Deng's “Low-Profile” with What?
• Fu bu guo sandai: Taking the Debate on “Chinese Democracy” Further

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Seoul in Korean History
• The Chinese Reaction
• The Japanese Reaction
• Conclusions

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• The Popular Dynamics of Chinese Nationalism
• Korean Attitudes: Suspicion/Fear of China and Resentment toward Japan
• The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute in Korean Media and Blogs
• Socotra Rock: A Sino-Korean Bone of Contention
• The Changbai/Paekdu Dispute through Japanese Eyes
• Conclusions

The ongoing phenomenon, generally labeled “the rise of China”, continues to amaze, disturb, and fascinate both the general public and academia across the globe. This book has sought to examine the various effects and perceptions of China's precipitous rise to global power in the West, in China itself, in Korea and in Japan…

The following section is included:

• Index