Author

Young Nam Cho has been an Associate Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University since 2002. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Seoul National University in 1999, and served as a visiting fellow at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Peking University, visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at Nankai University in Tianjin, and visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute. His major works include: Local People’s Congresses in China: Development and Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); China’s Path in the 21st Century (in Korean, Paju: Nanam, 2009); The Development of China’s Parliamentary System (in Korean, Seoul: Politeia, 2006); Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era (in Korean, Paju: Nanam, 2006); and China’s Political Reform and the National People's Congress (in Korean, Seoul: Nanam, 2000). His current research is focused on China’s parliamentary system, the rule of law, and the changes in state-society relations.

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing China’s alliance policy in the 21st policy. To this end, it investigates three topics. First is the readjustment of China’s foreign policy in the reform period and its effect on the changes of China’s alliance policy. Second is China’s countermeasure against the incremental strengthening of U.S.-Japanese alliance since the 1990s, which is the most serious security concern for China. Third are case studies of China’s alliance policy: one is Sino-North Korean alliance; another is Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The former is China’s sole official military alliance that is still legally effective, and the latter is the result of cooperation between China and Russia facing the so-called “hub-and-spokes system” led by the U.S.

Based on the analysis of above-mentioned three topics, this article argues that China in the post-Cold War period has implemented “soft balancing” policy which is argued by T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortma, instead of “hard balancing” of realist balance of power. This will not change in the foreseeable future. First of all, China theoretically excluded the traditional realist alliance policy in its foreign policy since the early 1980s on the basis of non-alliance principle, and the New Concept of Security (Xinanquanguan) which was raised in 1996 justified and intensified this Chinese position.

Furthermore, practically, China has flexibly coped with the strengthening of American-Japanese alliance by, for example, adopting limited build-ups of military power, maintaining good relationships with both the U.S. and Japan, and championing the establishment of regional multilateral security cooperation. In addition, China has taken initiative in weakening the Sino-North Korean alliance from “blood-tie” to “normal state-to-state-relationship,” and establishing SCO with Russia as soft balancing measure against American security policy in Asia.

The full text in Korean is available here