Author Byung Kwang Park, Institute for National Security Strategy         Abstract The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and predict U.S.-China relations on energy issues, which remains a contentious issue between the two states as they strive for global leadership. Over the next ten to twenty years, conflict and competition on energy between the United States and China will be fierce because of structural limitations. As yet though, it is still not easy to determine whether the assertive energy security policies and subsequent aggressive efforts for securing energy resources of the two countries will lead to a zero sum game. This is due to the fact that U.S.-China relations have the potential for compromise and cooperation as well as competition and confrontation. The United States and China share common interests in maintaining a reasonable price of oil, securing sea lines of communication, and a stable international political and economic environment. Moreover, the two countries can strengthen the strategic framework on new energy development.   A new paradigm though is necessary in the “technical”' and “normative” areas that will help to stem the current energy hegemonic competition. First, a new energy resource development is required to help replace the dependency on fossil fuels through the use of renewable and alternative energy sources. In addition, China's energy diplomacy needs to be aligned with international norms. Beijing also needs to exercise caution in its energy exchange with what the international community including the United States defines as “rogue states” as this can result in growing distrust and therefore heighten the chances for conflict.   The international community should also maintain cooperation with China rather than consider its aggressive energy diplomacy as a strategic challenge. Furthermore, in order to prevent confrontations over energy issues, the international community should also engage China so that it could embrace the norms of the international community. In this way, the ongoing energy competition between the United States and China will eventually allow for a new form of strategic cooperation between the two countries.         The full text in Korean is available here

EAI Asia Security Initiative Working Paper No. 23   Author Joo-Youn Jung is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Korea University (Seoul, Korea). After receiving the Ph.D. in Political Science at Stanford University, Dr. Jung worked as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) at Columbia University and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta (Alberta, Canada). Dr. Jung’s major field is comparative political economy, with expertise in China. Her research interest includes the economic role of the state, the state bureaucracy and the politics of institutional and economic reform. Her recent publications have appeared in journals such as the China Review, Pacific Focus, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, and Korea Observer and edited volumes such as Adapt, Fragment, Transform: Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in South Korea, Going Private in China: System Restructuring in China, and Methods and Methodology in China Studies.       I. Introduction   During the last decade, scholars in international relations as well as policymakers have debated how to interpret the impact of China’s rapid rise on world politics. Should we consider China’s rise as a potential threat to its neighboring countries, the United States, and existing international rules and norms? Is China a status quo power, or an aggressive challenger to the existing U.S.-centric world order? Diverse views and answers have been generated surrounding these questions. However, such answers tend to focus on how observers outside of China should interpret the security implications of China’s rise. Much less is known about how the Chinese perceive their security environment and China’s increasing national power. This situation is rather ironic, because, to explain the security implications of China’s rise, understanding Chinese perceptions of China’s security priorities, national power and status, and proper international role is essential and more important than merely relying on outsiders’ speculations regarding China’s intentions.   This working paper thus raises a question that is different from the questions commonly asked thus far: how does the Chinese public perceive China’s security environment and the rise of China? More specifically, what do ordinary Chinese regard as the biggest security threat to China? Is the United States considered a rival, an enemy, or a potential threat to China’s national security? Does the Chinese public understand today’s world as a U.S.-dominated system that is hostile to China? How do ordinary Chinese perceive the level of China’s national power and international status, and what do they think that China should do with its increasing power?   This working paper acknowledges that the Chinese public’s direct impact on foreign policies is limited. As in any country, ordinary Chinese do not have enough information on or expertise in international affairs and tend not to care much about the details of foreign policies that do not seem to have a direct impact on their daily lives. Furthermore, living under the authoritarian regime, the general Chinese public has little access to the national policymaking process in general, and is almost completely excluded from the closed foreign policymaking at the top leadership level. All in all, the Chinese public does not determine how China behaves.   Nevertheless, that does not mean that the Chinese public’s perceptions of national security and status are insignificant. Even an authoritarian regime cannot simply resort to oppression and propaganda but needs a certain level of popular support and legitimacy to survive and thrive. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), facing the serious side effects of rapid economic growth and marketization, such as widening social disparity, rising unemployment, and growing signs of social unrest, has struggled with its withering ideological appeal to the public and increasingly turned to nationalism as an alternative justification for its reign. The current Chinese regime cannot ignore what the general public thinks, especially when the issues at hand ignite nationalistic sentiments among the public and the public demands more assertive and aggressive positions of the government. Public sentiments and perceptions regarding China’s national security as well as China’s international status and role can limit political leaders’ policy options either by generating fears of an angry backlash from the public against the regime or by showing the extent to which the leaders can mobilize broader support for their policy positions and preferences. While the Chinese public does not determine how China behaves, the Chinese public can set constraints on how China behaves.   To analyze how the Chinese public perceives China’s security environment and the rise of China’s national power, this working paper utilizes a recent survey designed by a team of scholars including the author, with the support of the East Asia Institute (EAI)’s Asia Security Initiative Research Center. The survey was conducted in China for fifteen days from August 26 to September 9, 2011. It drew on a random sample of 1,029 Chinese over the age of 19 in ten major Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenyang, Xian, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Tianjin, and Nanjing. Respondents were selected by random digit dialing (RDD) to wire (50 percent) and wireless (50 percent) telephones using a computer assigned telephone interviewing (CATI) program. The survey outcome presented here reveals how the Chinese public perceives China’s security environment as well as China’s international status and role, and sheds new light on how rising China is likely to behave in the future.   This working paper is divided into four sections. Section 2 examines what the Chinese public regards as major threats to China. It discusses the security priorities of the general public as well as the Chinese public’s perception of the United States in comparison to other neighboring countries. Section 3 analyzes how the Chinese public perceives China’s international status and role. It discusses how the Chinese public understands power distribution in today’s world, how the public evaluates China’s power and status in the existing international order, and what kind of role the Chinese public expects China to play with its increasing power. The final section summarizes the findings of this working paper and discusses their implications.   II. Chinese Perceptions of External Threats   1. Top Security Threats: Energy, Environment, and Health Issues   What does the Chinese public perceive as the biggest threat to China’s national interests? Considering the heated discussion regarding China as a potential threat to its neighboring countries and the United States as well as the popular portrayal of China as the rival of the United States, the Chinese might also consider the economic competition and military conflicts with neighboring countries or the United States as the biggest potential threats to China’s national interests. The outcome, however, is rather unexpected.   The survey asks 1,029 surveyees how they evaluate the possibilities that major security issues would threaten China’s national interests during the next decade. Table 1 presents the answers in the order of the magnitude of perceived threat (based on the percentages summed in column 3). Interestingly, the top three issues, holding considerably higher percentages than the rest in column 3, are neither economic nor military threats from other countries. First of all, over 90 percent of the respondents think that disruption in the energy supply would threaten China’s national interests during the next decade, making it the most serious threat to China’s national interests in the near future. Almost 50 percent of the respondents regard the energy shortage as “very threatening,” which shows the sense of urgency shared among the public about a possible energy crisis. A stable energy supply is key to sustainable economic growth, and the heavy concerns about the energy shortage reveal that at the core of the Chinese public’s perceptions of national threats are the Chinese economy and its internal vulnerability...(Continued)

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No.33 Author   Dr. Kai He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Utah State University (USU). Before USU, he also taught at Spelman College and Georgia State University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Arizona State University in 2007. His research interests include international security, international political economy, Asian security, Chinese politics, and social science research methods. He is the author of Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacific: Economic Interdependence and China's Rise (Routledge, 2009). He has also published articles in European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, The Pacific Review, Asian Security, Asian Perspective, and International Relations of the Asia Pacific. He is a recipient of the 2009-2010 Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. He worked in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University during the 2009-2010 academic year.         Abstract   Through examining four notable foreign policy crises with the United States since the end of the Cold War: the 1993 Yinhe ship inspection incident, the 1995-6 Taiwan Strait crisis, the 1999 embassy bombing incident, and the 2001 EP-3 midair collision, I introduce a prospect theory-based model to systematically explain China’s foreign policy crisis behavior after the cold war. I suggest that Chinese crisis behavior is shaped by three factors that frame the domain of actions of Chinese decision makers during crises: the severity of crisis, leaders’ domestic authority, and international pressure. When Chinese leaders are framed in a domain of losses, e.g., under a condition of high severity of crisis, low leadership authority, and high international pressure, a risk-acceptant behavior, either military coercion or diplomatic coercion, is more likely to be adopted. When Chinese leaders are framed in a domain of gains, e.g., under a condition of low severity of the crisis, high leadership authority, and low international pressure, a risk-averse behavior, either conditional accommodation or full accommodation, is more likely to be chosen. China’s leadership transition might increase the possibility for China to choose risk-acceptant policies during future foreign policy crises. Other countries, especially the United States, should pay more attention to shape Chinese leaders’ domain of actions to a constructive direction through both people-to-people and state-to-state channels.   *Paper prepared for the EAI Fellowship (2011-2012) seminars at the East Asia Institute (Seoul), Beijing University (Beijing), and Fudan University (Shanghai) in May-June 2012.     The rise of China is one of the most dynamic political phenomena in world politics in the 21st century. Although U.S.-China relations have been relatively stable since the end of the cold war, the two countries are far from establishing a high level of strategic trust and mutual confidence. The United States and China have experienced several major foreign policy crises in the past 20 years, such as the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the 2001 EP-3 aircraft collision off the coast of China. Some scholars even suggest that the United States faces an inevitable conflict with a rising China. Due to the mutual deterrence effects of nuclear weapons, large-scale military conflicts should be avoided between China and the United States. However, because of diverse strategic interests and different ideologies, diplomatic and military crises still seem unavoidable in future US-China relations. If the two countries cannot manage foreign policy crises effectively and peacefully, escalating conflicts—even war—may occur unexpectedly between the two nations. Therefore, it is imperative for policy makers to understand China’s dynamic behavior in foreign policy crises, i.e., when China will take risks to escalate conflict and when China will avoid risks to seek accommodation during crises.   China has experienced four notable foreign policy crises with the United States since the end of the Cold War: the 1993 Yinhe ship inspection incident, the 1995-6 Taiwan Strait crisis, the 1999 embassy bombing incident, and the 2001 EP-3 midair collision. China adopted four different policies in these four crises. In the Yinhe ship inspection incident, China fully accommodated to U.S. demand of entirely inspecting Yinhe, a Chinese container ship that was accused to carry materials for chemical weapons to Iran, even though China believed that the United States did not have any legal right to conduct such an inspection. In the 1995-6 Taiwan crisis, China’s policy was militarily coercive in nature through a series of military and missile tests across the Taiwan Strait as retaliation for U.S. permission of then Taiwanese President Lee Ting-hui to visit the United States in 1995. In the 1999 embassy bombing incident, China’s policy was also coercive, but only diplomatically through cutting off diplomatic and military contacts with the United States. In the 2001 EP-3 incident, China adopted a conditional accommodation policy to defuse the crises in which China released the 24 EP-3 crews after receiving a vague “apology letter” from U.S. government. Why did the Chinese leaders behave differently across these four crises?   Most of the existing literature focuses on tracing through these crisis events, identifying the crisis management deficiencies between the United States and China, and presenting the implications of these crises to regional security. In-depth, systematic studies on China’s post-cold war crisis behavior, however, are limited partly because these crises are not full- fledged, military-involved events and partly because data access to more current events is relatively difficult.   In this research, I borrow insights from prospect theory, a Nobel-prize-winning behavioral psychology theory, to systematically examine China’s foreign policy crisis behavior after the cold war. I introduce a legitimacy-prospect model to explain the variation of China’s behavior across different crises. I suggest that there are four types of foreign policy behavior during crises: military coercion (the 1995/6 Taiwan crisis), diplomatic coercion (the 1999 embassy bombing incident), conditional accommodation (the 2001 EP-3 incident), and full accommodation (the 1993 Yinhe incident). While the two coercive policies are risk-acceptant behaviors, the two accommodation policies are risk-averse in nature.   I argue that Chinese crisis behavior is shaped by three factors that frame the domain of actions of Chinese decision makers during crises: the severity of crisis, leaders’ domestic authority, and international pressure. When Chinese leaders are framed in a domain of losses, e.g., under a condition of high severity of crisis, low leadership authority, and high international pressure, a risk-acceptant behavior, either military coercion or diplomatic coercion, is more likely to be adopted. When Chinese leaders are framed in a domain of gains, e.g., under a condition of low severity of the crisis, high leadership authority, and low international pressure, a risk-averse behavior, either conditional accommodation or full accommodation, is more likely to be chosen.   The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. First, I discuss the theoretical and empirical deficiencies of current research on China’s foreign policy crisis behavior. Second, I introduce the prospect theory-based legitimacy-prospect model and proposed major hypotheses of China’s foreign policy crisis behavior. Third, I examine the four foreign policy crises China experienced after the cold war to test the validity of the legitimacy-prospect model. In conclusion, I suggest that China’s leadership transition might increase the possibility of China to choose risk-acceptant policies during future foreign policy crises. Other countries, especially the United States, should pay more attention to shape Chinese leaders’ domain of actions to a constructive direction through both people-to-people and state-to-state channels...(Continued)

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 1   Abstract The paper examines the increasing influence of various domestic factors such as academics, media, and public opinion within the context of newly developed internet technology, on the foreign policy making of the People’s Republic of China in the last decade. The basic research questions of this study are: Has there been an emergence of societal forces, independent of the Communist Party, that have begun to exert influence over the foreign policy making process? If so, how is it affecting the ability of Chinese government to frame and implement foreign policies?  It argues  that due to an open door policy and the increasing development of information technology, China's hierarchical, elite-driven foreign policy making structure has experienced profound changes; these changes, which are characterized with decentralization, professionalization and institutionalization,  have created opportunities for societal forces to influence the decision making process.  It suggests that globalization has produced a certain amount of transnational forces within Chinese society, and the degree of its influence depends on how the public is informed and manipulated and the degree of the country’s integration with the world. When the public has more access to information about the outside world and internal development, the societal pressure influencing foreign policy behavior becomes more visible.    Author Yufan Hao is Professor of Political Sciences at Colgate University. He obtained his MA and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1984 and 1989 respectively and was a McArthur Fellow at Harvard University Center for International Affairs 1988-1989. He was a visiting professor to Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University of China. His latest books include Chinese Foreign Policy Making: Societal Forces in Chinese American Policy Making, (Ashgate, London, co-edited, 2005); Bush’s Dilemma: Experts on the Possible Trend of American Foreign Policy (Shishi, Beijing, co-edited, 2005); Power of the Moment: American and the World after 9/11 (Xinhua, Beijing, co-authored, 2002), White House China Decision (Renmin Press, Beijing, 2002). Currently he serves as the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at University of Macau.   This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.     The spring of 2005 was quite turbulent in China-Japan relations. Along with the issues of Security Council bid, the history textbook, and gas exploration in disputed waters, Japan stated on the Chinese Lunar New Year that the Senkaku Islands were officially Japanese. In February, Japan and the US declared a closer military bond. After another visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where convicted Class-A war criminals are honored along with other Japanese war dead, the bilateral relations plunged to their lowest point since 1972, when a nationwide anti- Japanese riots erupted in China. Angry Chinese protesters marched at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, throwing eggs and rocks protesting against school textbooks they say whitewash Japanese wartime atrocities in China, and against Tokyo’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and against Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine. After a week of violent protests against Japan in Beijing, thousands marched on the Japanese consulate in Shanghai, smashing its windows with rocks, pelting it with paint bombs and attacking Japanese restaurants along the way. Protest spread to several large cities in the south, as Chinese massed outside Japanese stores and consulates, calling for a boycott of Japanese products and demanding that Japan own up to war crimes of 60 years ago. The rising anti-Japanese sentiments within Chinese society have made it more difficulty for the Beijing leadership when making their policies towards the Tokyo. Chinese government became tougher towards Tokyo and publicly registered its objection to Japan’s bid to UN Security Council. Meanwhile, Chinese government began to clamp down harder to keep the capital peaceful before Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura’s visit. University students were warned by email not to protest. Top anti-Japanese activists in Beijing were rounded up to prevent further protests. China even began to control media coverage of Sino-Japanese relations and had cancelled a few academic conferences and workshops related to Japan.   Why did the Chinese leadership decide to take a tough stand toward Japan at the time China is trying to show to the world its peaceful intention of rising up? At the same time, what made the Chinese leaders try continually to maintain relations with Tokyo, not hurting 178 billion dollars in annual trade between the two economic powers?   What happened in the spring of 2005 seems to illustrate a long overlooked element affecting Chinese foreign policy making: the influence of social forces. Since 1949, Chinese foreign policy has been traditionally viewed as highly centralized, dominated by a few powerful, personalized seniors acting free from domestic public pressure. Never before has Chinese leadership considered the interests and opinions of various domestic political constituencies. What  happened in 2005 in China’s policy towards Japan seems to illustrate an interesting change. Beijing leadership had to accommodate domestic outcry in the wake of the certain external events, even though they wished to maintain and continue to improve Sino-Japanese relations. The moment may have arrived in China when policy makers cannot create policy initiatives without a serious consideration of public opinion, and support within the bureaucratic apparatus. This may represent a gradual but significant shift from the Communist Party’s centralized control over Vhina’s foreign policy making, relatively free of social pressure, to a new pattern characterized by increasing domestic restraints...(Continued)    

EAI MPDI Working Paper No. 10   Author   Dong Ryul Lee is a professor at the Department of Chinese Studies of the Dongduk Women’s University since 1997. He is now a chair at China Research Panel of East Asia Institute (EAI). Previously, he served as a policy advisor to the Republic of Korea Ministry of Unification and an executive committee member in the Joint Committee of Experts for Korea-China Strategic Cooperative Partnership. He was also an editor of The Journal of Contemporary China Studies in Korea (2010-2011). He was a visiting scholar in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University from August 2005 to August 2006. He received his Ph.D. in the Department of International Politics, Peking University in 1996. He has published many scholarly articles, monographs, and edited books, including Global Superpower? Prospects for China’s Future (2011), “China’s Policy and Influence on the North Korea Nuclear Issue: Denuclearization and/or Stabilization of the Korean Peninsula?” in The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis (2010), China’s Territorial Dispute (2008), and “Chinese Diplomatic Behavior in the United Nations” (2007). His research area includes Chinese foreign policy, international relations in East Asia, Chinese nationalism and minority.         This working paper will be included in an upcoming EAI publication set to be released in Spring 2016 entitled "Transforming Global Governance with Middle Power Diplomacy: South Korea's Role in the 21st Century." Please check in soon for the latest publication updates.

EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No.47   Author Ji-Young Lee is an Assistant Professor of School of International Service, American University. Dr. Lee’s research focuses on East Asian international relations, security, and diplomatic history. Her first book examines Chinese hegemony in early modern East Asia and is currently under review. Her second project investigates how China’s rise impacts the American-led international order, specifically through the lens of the U.S.-ROK alliance and China. At SIS, she teaches courses on Asian international politics, Korean politics and foreign policy, and North Korea and international security. Prior to AU, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Politics and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, where she also taught as a visiting assistant professor. She was a POSCO visiting fellow at the East-West Center and a non-resident James Kelly Korean Studies Fellow with the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies. Currently, she is a Korea Foundation-Mansfield Foundation scholar of the U.S.-Korea Scholar-Policymaker Nexus program.         With the growth of China’s relative power vis-à-vis the United States, many wonder whether China will replace the United States as the leading power in Asia. As one way to think about this debate, we can historicize the rise of China in the broader view of Asian international relations. Prior to the nineteenth century, the rise of a new Chinese state was always one of the most important sources of international change in the East Asian states system. It is arguable that China’s East Asian neighbors Japan and Korea had dealt with the “rising China question” several times prior to the twenty-first century. Is it possible then that we can identify recurring historical patterns in Asian international relations that may help elucidate today’s questions? China was the sole great power for centuries in East Asia. How does this affect the process of China’s rise now in the American-led hegemonic order? What policy-relevant lessons can we draw from the overall pattern of the way the Chinese hegemonic order worked during the early modern period that many scholars consider a period of “Asia’s long peace”?   In this paper, I approach the question of China’s rise today historically, and explore its implications for international order, especially in the areas of the U.S. alliance system in East Asia. The goal is neither to suggest that history will repeat itself, nor to predict that a particular future scenario will hold. Rather, the paper surveys how the past history of the Sino-centric tribute system is contributing to the shaping of the rise of China today. It then challenges two popular notions that inform the current debate about a rising China. One is the idea that China’s growing power will reestablish regional hegemony on the model of a Sino-centric tribute system, and the other is that Japan and South Korea should make natural security partners against a rising China.   More specifically, I make the following two claims. First, the tribute system is not a notion that is comparable with the concept of sovereignty upon which the existing international system is built. As such, any invocation of this notion tends to be associated with China’s revisionist intentions against the sovereignty norms in today’s international politics. Beijing’s own invocation of its imperial past in the context of its territorial claims over the South China Sea and the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands have, for example, contributed to the speculation that China is seeking to change the status quo and challenging the liberal principles that the current international order rests on. Second, historicizing China’s rise highlights the logic of geopolitics found in Asian history as a mechanism for continuity. By the logic of geopolitics, I mean the politics arising from the geostrategic location of the Korean peninsula as the “bridge” between China and Japan. I argue that an in-depth study on the recurring dynamics in Japan and Korea’s responses to imperial China suggests that China’s growing power and influence may affect America’s alliance system, not by openly challenging the U.S. and its allies, but by creating a structural condition for further highlighting the differences in Japanese and Korean responses to a rising China. Further, the overall pattern of international conflicts in China-Japan-Korea relations indicates that the Sino-Japanese strategic rivalry and the contingency situation over North Korea will be troubling hotspots for Asian security, possibly entrapping the United States and China in an unwanted military confrontation.   A mention of the scope conditions of this study is in order. I primarily look at the early modern period in Asian history and the major international events associated with the Chinese hegemonic order between the fourteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries (the Ming and High Qing periods in China; the Koryo and Choson periods in Korea; the Muromachi, Senkoku, Tokugawa periods in Japan). Rather than presenting details of the historical study, the paper will focus on drawing its key insights. The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. In the first section, I will discuss how the images of the past Sino-centric tribute system are affecting China’s rise today, while using three recent events as a window into what I call the “politics of the tribute system” in contemporary Asian politics. In the second section, I present my argument about what the tribute system was, challenging some of the existing images that have shaped the debate on a rising China. The third section discusses the lessons drawn from research on China-Japan-Korea relational patterns in early modern East Asia for a policy-relevant analysis that speaks to the contemporary debate on the future of U.S. alliance system and a rising China in East Asia.   The Politics of the Sino-centric Tribute System and a Rising China Today   In recent years, in both popular dialogue and academic discourse, a Sino-centric tribute system and China’s imperial past are increasingly perceived as associated with China’s future intentions. It is argued that a growing Chinese power will establish regional hegemony modeled on the tribute system. International relations scholar Charles Kupchan notes, “China might attempt to exercise a brand of regional hegemony modeled on the tribute system.” In popular dialogue, too, China’s invocation of its imperial past in territorial disputes has led many to suspect that China intends to resurrect “a new face to China’s ancient tributary system where China is the central power and Beijing is the global political pole.”   These speculations may come as little surprise as people wonder how China will use its power in the future. China’s own invocations of the Sino-centric tribute system took place in the process of China’s engagement with the world, with the prime example being the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. China chose the glamor of the Tang empire (618-907) and the Ming empire (1368-1644) as key themes in the ceremony in order to convey the message to the world that a ‘real China’ is powerful, confident, prosperous and cosmopolitan. The tributary missions by Zheng He during the Ming period were to highlight the harmony that Confucian values lend to the world, and that China’s rise is not a threat.   At a deeper level, the discourse on the tribute system is being animated in part because China is in the process of defining a new great power identity with its newly acquired power and wealth in the twenty-first century. It is seeking inspiration from an idealized version of its imperial past, including the influence and respect it enjoyed from its neighbors during earlier centuries. President Xi Jinping defines China’s foreign policy as serving “the ‘Two Centuries’ objective to realize the great rejuvenation of Chinese nation.” The “Chinese Dream” seeks to promote China’s cultural soft power and modern Chinese values, while he emphasizes that “China should be portrayed as a civilized country featuring rich history, ethnic unity, cultural diversity, and as an oriental power with good government, developed economy, cultural prosperity, national unity and beautiful mountains and rivers.” China’s dream is presented as a common dream of all of Asia. Further, the official China Daily writes, “The realization of the Chinese Dream is conducive to facilitating the rejuvenation of Asia.”   How about other East Asian neighboring powers’ views on China’s imperial past and the Sino-centric tribute system? How do these notions affect their perceptions of China’s rise? Despite China’s intended message of a peaceful rise, it appears that the discourse on the tribute system is interpreted as China’s intention of changing the status quo, while sometimes contributing to shifts in neighboring powers’ views on the rise of China. There are three events that can provide us with a potential window into this dynamics: the Koguryo dispute between China and the two Koreas, the territorial disputes over the South China Sea, and the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands between China and Japan. What emerges from the developments of these events is as follows.   First, the notion of the Sino-centric system is not simply a question of China’s great power identity, but is also associated with the identity politics of its neighboring countries. The Koguryo dispute shows that differing interpretations over the history related to the tribute system can sensitize what Mitzen called “ontological security.” Ontological security refers to the need of a state to “experience oneself as a whole, continuous person in time… in order to realize a sense of agency.” In other words, given that Koreans have long regarded Koguryo (which existed from 37 BC to AD 668) as the fiercely independent Korean state, the claim that Koguryo was a provincial vassal kingdom of China threatened a Korean sense of ontological security. This flare-up between South Korea and China had substantial effects on the South Korean perception of the rise of China as a potential threat to their national security, a shift from its earlier excitement about China’s rise in Asia. An April 2004 Korea Herald poll found that 63 percent of South Korea’s ruling party members viewed China as its most important diplomatic partner. In August, however, a similar poll showed that that less than 6 percent of South Korea’s National Assembly members regarded China as their country’s most valuable diplomatic partner.   Second, the Sino-centric tribute system is juxtaposed with the rules and norms of the existing international law as exemplified by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the case of the disputes over the South China Sea. In the process of parties to the disputes presenting their own claims, China’s invocation of the territorial rights “since ancient times” was considered as challenging international law and the liberal principles that the existing international order rests on. The disputes resulted in “a rapid dissipation of China’s ‘soft power’” that existed leading up to the Beijing Olympics. Today, China’s neighbors think about the link between China’s imperial past and its current ambitions, where “the main distinguishing feature of Zheng He’s voyages was the size of the vessels and numbers of soldiers they carried, enabling China to impose its will on some lesser territories.” Arguably, the heightened threat perceptions felt by Southeast Asian countries toward a rising China have led to the tightening of their security ties with the United States as part of “rebalancing to Asia” strategy. Third, another example of the linkage between the tribute system and a rising China occurred in June 2013, when China disputed Japan’s sovereignty of Okinawa on the grounds that the Ryukyu kingdom paid tribute to imperial China. Although the Chinese government involvement with this assertion is a question, cases such as these matter, because of its potential to escalate the tension between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute into a crisis mode...(Continued)

Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia   Author  Seung-Youn Oh is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College starting Fall 2013. She specializes in international relations and comparative politics in East Asia. Her broader academic interests include China’s industrial restructuring and upgrading, state-owned enterprise reform and corporate governance, the effects of national origin of foreign direct investment on local economic development, as well as the evolving role of Chinese governments at the national and sub-national levels in shaping the country’s developmental path.   Seung-Youn is currently working on her book manuscript based on her dissertation, The Limits of Liberalization: Sub-National Government Autonomy and the Auto Industry in Post-WTO Era China. In the dissertation, she seeks to understand effects of international linkages on regional economic development in China, with a specific focus on China’s burgeoning automotive industry.   Her recent articles have appeared in China Quarterly and Asian Survey. Prior to coming to Bryn Mawr, she served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania for the year 2012-2013. She has also served as a visiting lecturer at the Shanghai branch of the French school of management, École Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales from 2009 to 2012.   In addition, Seung-Youn served as the Northeast Asia Project Director at the Berkeley Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Study Center, where she assisted in organizing the conference for the volume, Asia’s New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Structures for Managing Trade, Financial and Security Relations (Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo, eds., Springer Verlag, 2008). She has been a research fellow of the Korean Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS) and a visiting scholar at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) in Beijing, China. Seung-Youn holds an M.A. and Ph.D in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Political Science as valedictorian from Yonsei University in Korea. She spent a year as an undergraduate exchange student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.         Abstract Through case studies of China’s WTO trade disputes in the automobile and wind turbine sectors, I argue that China’s compliance with WTO rulings reflects Beijing’s skillful navigation through the WTO’s dispute-resolution process rather than socialization to international norms. China liberally implements industrial policies and removes them after they come into dispute at the WTO — strategies that I characterize as “convenient compliance.” By the time China removes the challenged measures, it often no longer needs them, since it has already achieved its goals and can still build up a reputation as a responsible WTO member by complying with the organization’s rulings. The dynamics of the global supply chain certainly complicate foreign business groups’ interests and countries’ domestic political calculations regarding trade disputes with China.         China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was hailed as a significant step forward in opening up China’s markets and curbing governmental practices that placed foreign firms at a competitive disadvantage. While moving from being a cautious observer to an active participant in the WTO, China has demonstrated an outstanding record of compliance with the organization’s dispute settlement rulings; in most cases, Beijing has either reached agreement with the complainant over the disputed practices or removed measures the WTO finds inconsistent with China’s WTO obligations. As such, China’s record at the WTO appears to confirm international relations and legal studies scholarship on international organizations’ effectiveness in socializing and pressuring China for further economic liberalization.   However, China’s achievement in this regard is overshadowed by foreign governments’ and businesses’ increasing criticisms regarding their diminishing access to the Chinese market and Beijing’s continuing use of WTO-inconsistent industrial policy measures. In recent years, trade disputes involving China at the WTO have increased, focusing on the issues of subsidies, anti-dumping, favorable treatment of domestic companies, and discrimination against foreign businesses or imports. This begs the question of how to reconcile two different pictures: China’s continuing reliance on industrial policy measures that contradict WTO rules and its record of successful compliance within the WTO’s dispute-settlement process. Conventional wisdom views China’s compliance with the WTO rulings as a measure of China’s socialization to international norms and the effectiveness of WTO’s dispute-settlement process in addressing trade concerns with China, as compared to the era of bilateral negotiations. But if China’s compliance with the WTO settlement process is a result of China’s socialization into international standards, why do we not see a simultaneous decrease in China’s adoption of WTO-inconsistent measures? What does China’s continuing reliance on industrial policy measures and ability to flout WTO rules reveal about the trade organization’s limits? In the relationship between the WTO and China, who is socializing whom and who is limiting whom?   In examining the pattern of China’s compliance with WTO dispute settlements, this article argues that China keep its industrial policies one step ahead of the WTO umpire by conveniently complying later with WTO dispute rulings. Under the WTO system, China does not hesitate to implement WTO-inconsistent regulations as a way to protect infant industries, develop strategic industries, and nurture national champions. Because the legal process at the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) takes months or even years, China continues to benefit from disputed policies while they are being reviewed and then can repeal them once the challenge succeeds. Also, DSB rulings mostly accomplish the removal of the offending measures rather than punishing the country that violated the provisions. Thus, it is in China’s best interest to adopt industrial policy measures first and remove them afterwards when they are in dispute. In doing so, China not only achieves its developmental purposes of putting those measures in place but also builds a reputation as a responsible WTO member by complying with the DSB rulings — a practice that I characterize as convenient compliance. Thus, China’s compliance reflects Beijing’s realpolitik calculation of achieving its economic development goals by navigating through the limitations of the WTO’s dispute-settlement process, rather than reflecting China’s socialization to international norms.   I also contend that multinational companies (MNCs) are not necessarily the main drivers of economic liberalization in China, as is often assumed in the literature. MNCs implicitly or explicitly support protectionist measures in China either because they fear retribution from Chinese government officials or because they benefit from gaining even small pieces of the ever-enlarging pie of Chinese trade. Global supply chain dynamics certainly complicate the issue of initiating trade disputes with China. First, interests between those economic actors who benefit from inexpensive Chinese imports and those who are hurt by them diverge. Second, interests also diverge between businesses without clear investment or contract ties with China and those with existing operations in China who are dealing with the country’s regulatory system on a daily basis. Firms’ form of market entry and their mode of operation in China often shape their attitudes toward initiating trade disputes with Beijing.   In an effort to substantiate China’s pattern of “convenient compliance,” I examine two recently completed trade disputes. First, I look at the dispute over China’s Measures Affecting Imports of Automobile Parts (DS 340), which the United States brought to the WTO in 2006 because of its adverse impact on American automobile parts exports to China. This is the first WTO case where China allowed the dispute to go through the full panel process. The second case I examine is China’s Special Fund for Wind Power Equipment Manufacturing (DS 419), where the United States and the European Union contested China’s subsidies for domestic wind turbine manufacturers that use domestic rather than imported goods.   I chose these cases as representative and indicative examples of China’s record of convenient compliance at the WTO. First, both have been viewed as positive examples of China’s removing contested measures upon the WTO’s final decision. Second, both the auto and the wind turbine industry have received strategic support from Chinese governments at various levels. Lastly, both cases show how China can continue to pursue its developmental goals by adopting other measures to replace the measures that were contested at the WTO. The auto case has continued to have an impact with the recent dispute the United States brought to the WTO in September 2012 regarding China’s subsidies for local automakers, and the wind case has had an impact on other green energy industries, such as solar panels.   This article begins by introducing my empirical puzzle and delineating the literature review on the WTO’s and MNCs’ impact on socializing and liberalizing China. I then explain my theoretical framework of convenient compliance and provide two trade dispute cases in the automotive and the wind turbine sectors. In so doing, I demonstrate how developing countries flout WTO rules, which in turn raises important systemic issues not only for the WTO, but also for free market principles in coping with the challenges raised by a large transitional economy like China.   Empirical Puzzle: What’s behind China’s Compliance to the WTO’s Dispute Settlement?   From its WTO accession till August 2014, China has participated in 155 disputes — 12 cases as a complainant, 31 cases as a respondent, and 112 cases as a third party. China is expected to be part of more trade disputes, given that it became the world’s largest exporter starting in 2009 and that the scope for trade friction increases as countries trade more. In fact, China was a party to only two of the 93 trade disputes at the WTO between its accession in 2001 and the end of 2005, but in 2009, China was a party to half of the fourteen new WTO disputes initiated in that year. And in 2010, China was involved in 26 of the 84 cases filed at the WTO. The United States accounts for the lion’s share of cases against China — as it has initiated 50 percent of the WTO disputes targeting China and participated in 70 percent of all WTO cases against China (which include disputes initiated by the EU). WTO members have mostly challenged Chinese industrial policy measures that favor state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other domestic companies, discriminate against imports, and restrict foreign companies’ access to Chinese markets. The issues involved in these disputes include intellectual property rights, trading rights, and distribution services for products such as semiconductors, auto parts, and more recently renewable energy components. Over the years, China has shown “aggressive legalism” by being active in initiating disputes at the WTO, as it realizes its ability to use membership in the organization to defend its rights and interests. The eleven cases China has initiated at the WTO have so far targeted only two members — the U.S. (eight cases) and the EU (three cases). Nine of these cases have concerned trade remedies targeting anti-dumping, countervailing measures, and safeguard measures (Figure 1).   China’s compliance record in WTO dispute settlements has been quite outstanding. In the 11 completed cases where China was the respondent, Beijing has either reached agreement with the complainant over the disputed practices or has removed the measures that the DSB has found to be inconsistent with China’s WTO obligations. Of the eight completed cases where China was the complainant, Beijing has won four cases, received mixed rulings in another, and lost the remaining three cases. This record suggests that the WTO has been more effective in addressing countries’ trade concerns with China when compared with the era of bilateral trade negotiations. What does China’s increasing compliance with WTO procedures say about international institutions’ impact on transitional economies like China? And what about China’s continued reliance on industrial policies and discriminatory measures that contradict WTO principles and tilt the playing field against foreign business and imports?   The “liberalization group” of analysts in international relations and international legal studies expected China to accelerate its economic liberalization by preparing a level playing field for foreign companies and imports and increasingly comply with WTO rulings. First, according to these neo-liberal scholars, the WTO facilitates trade liberalization among nations by providing, monitoring, and enforcing rules on a multilateral basis. Its DSB enforces trade rules by evaluating a country’s potential WTO rule violations upon the request of other countries’ trade representatives. By entering the WTO, China abolished more than 800 of its trade-related rules during the first few months of 2002 and it had adopted, revised, or abolished an additional 2,300 pieces of legislation by the end of 2005.   Constructivist scholars, meanwhile, highlight international institutions’ ability to teach and socialize member countries to adopt international norms. According to this argument, China’s participation in the WTO leads China to incorporate WTO principles and terms into the Chinese government’s standard operating procedures and to mobilize domestic agents who share the idea of economic liberalization and compliance with WTO rules. These processes of learning and norm diffusion take place through the establishment of networks between domestic and transnational actors, or an “acculturation” process whereby a state “adopts the beliefs and behavioral patterns of the surrounding culture” through micro-processes of mimicry, identification, and status maximization. Scholars in international legal studies also believe that once countries join international legal agreements, they change behaviors and abide by those agreements out of the reputational concern of being considered a responsible member of the international community. However, these socialization and learning arguments would be more persuasive if we had witnessed China’s compliance with WTO rulings improve over time.   Figure 1. WTO Dispute Cases involving China (2001-August 2014)   Source: WTO, Dispute settlement: the map of disputes between WTO members, available at: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_maps_e.htm?country_selected=CHN&sense=e   Another group of scholars speak about how WTO rules are more constraining for developing countries than developed countries. According to Robert Wade (2003) and Linda Weiss (2005), WTO rules diminish developing countries’ room to maneuver by prohibiting industrial policy measures that developing countries may want to use in labor- and capital-intensive manufacturing industry. Most importantly, the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) prohibits popular non-tariff barriers such as imposing requirements on foreign companies regarding local content, trade balancing, export performance, technology transfer, and domestic sales. On the other hand, other WTO rules permit — or at least do not explicitly prohibit — advanced countries to pursue more restrictive industrial policy in technology-intensive industries. For example, governments in developed countries can offer substantial support for venture capital financing of high-tech start-ups or provide strategic financing for pre-commercial technologies and product development. Thus, Wade and Weiss argue that developed countries craft WTO rules to best suit their current developmental trajectory, thereby putting developing countries at a systemic disadvantage...(Continued)

Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia   Author Allen Carlson is an Associate Professor in Cornell University’s Government Department. His work mainly focuses on issues related to Chinese politics and foreign policy and Asian security. In 2005 his Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese Sovereignty in the Reform Era was published by Stanford University Press. He has also written in the Journal of Contemporary China, Pacific Affairs, Asia Policy, Nations and Nationalism and The China Quarterly (forthcoming). His most recent books are the co-edited Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods and Field Strategies (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and New Frontiers in China’s Foreign Relations (Lexington, 2011). In 2014 Carlson was the Class of 1955 Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College, and he was named a recipient of an East Asia Institute Fellowship. Professor Carlson is currently developing a research project that examines the emerging role of transnational public intellectuals in shaping debates within China about the country’s rise and its implications for the international system.         Introduction   This paper, which is part of a larger research project, takes up the issue of contemporary China’s relationship with the rest of the world, and between its government and people. In so doing it challenges much of the conventional wisdom about China, both in terms of how to study the country, how it got to this juncture, and where it is headed. It contends that China’s recent emergence on the world stage is much more complex, and mercurial, than observers have so far recognized. It is also one that China’s leaders have found to be increasingly vexing as they have raced to make sense of their new found international position and to maintain control over developments both at home and abroad that are part and parcel of the country’s emergence as a major power.   The paper’s central argument is that China should be viewed as a transnational polity. This state not only involves a deep level of integration between its economy and the international one (a topic that has already been discussed at length by political economists), but also how those within China think of themselves and their country’s relationship with the rest of the world. This is not to say that China have become particularly cosmopolitan, but rather that it is deeply entwined with the international system in ways that extend well beyond how we normally think of the country. Such a development has stimulated deep and far reaching debates within the China over fundamental issues of collective identity and China’s place within the existing international order, while posing a series of troublesome difficulties for a Chinese leadership looking to coral such discussions in a direction that will enhance rather than erode its authority and control over one of the world’s largest, and most powerful, states.    To be clear from the start this is not to contend that such a change is pervasive, or irreversible, but rather that it is meaningful, and constitutes one of the most important recent (even though it is embedded in a longer history of openness) developments within China, and its relationship with the outside world. It is also a shift that has largely gone under-reported by those who study the country. The project from which this paper is drawn looks to rectify such a shortcoming via a focus upon the prominent role within the country of elites who have deep intellectual bonds outside of China, but whom have attain a level of prominence within the country. More specifically, I contend that this group has attained a high level of significance and influence within China, especially following the removal of many of the physical barriers to movement into and out of the country over the last several decades, and with the more recent rise of Internet-based social media that has eclipsed more traditional, territorially grounded, forms of communication. Such actors stand in a nebulous, but crucial, space between China and the world, but also between the country’s top leaders and its vast population.   Over the last 25 years these transnational public intellectuals have moved relatively unfettered across China’s territorial boundaries, gained access to the highest levels of power within the country, and influenced the tone and tenor of popular debates and discussions, while also serving as its main interlocutors on the international stage. It is my impression that many within China are aware of this trend, however, I also feel as was the case with Montesquieu, and the light he shed on American politics over two hundred years ago, outside insight into this Chinese dynamic is needed if we are to fully describe and explain its development and significance.   This paper then places transnational public intellectuals at the center of studying contemporary Chinese politics and foreign relations. The larger project from which it draws upon then considers two primary cases (international relations scholars and contemporary artists) and four secondary ones (economists, legal scholars, leaders of religious movements, and the musicians in the underground music scene). The main empirical chapters of the manuscript that will follow examine how those within these groups have spoken to each other, influenced the state, and shaped public discussions both within their specific areas of expertise, but also more broadly, through contributing to and shaping public debates about what it is to be Chinese, and where the country now fits into the existing international order. Such broader questions have been grounded with a particular attention to the extent to which over the last three decades those within these groups have tended toward either insular or cosmopolitan interpretations of China and its place in the world.   Such a survey, though, extends beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, on the following pages I set out the foundations for the project by considering how the transnational has played a role within contemporary Chinese politics, outlining the extent to which such influences have been under-reported in the existing secondary literature on the country and its foreign relations, and mapping out the conceptual framework for overcoming such limitations.     Part 1: Questioning the Naturalness of Insularity and Autarky within Modern China   China’s present is very often studied with reference to the country’s propensity and attachment to isolation and insularity, to wall building, to xenophobia. The prevalence of such an interpretation of what was normal for China is evident in both casual studies of the country and in more sophisticated academic treatises. It is a perspective that makes it difficult to see the extent to which the transnational has played a pivotal role in shaping China’s modern development and current trajectory. Thus, for any study seeking to put the transnational at its center it is a necessary first step to challenge the natural, taken for granted nature, of such a narrative.   In brief, the stepping off point for viewing modern China as insular can be found in virtually every conventional study of the turn of the previous century when the Qing dynastic system teetered, and then finally fell in 1911, to be replaced, eventually, by a modern nation-state structure. Not surprisingly this period of rapid transition has long attracted historians and political scientists seeking to describe and explain its tumultuous politics. One might expect that work of this period would give broad consideration to the possibility that the new China that emerged from the wreckage of the Qing was more open to the external world than had previous been the case. Indeed, at first glance, this emphasis is visible in the way the period is normally presented. However, upon closer examination it becomes apparent that most surveys of the time fall back upon known truths about Chinese preferences for insularity.   This being the said, it is also the case that the conventional story in this literature is told with reference to surging levels of economic and political interaction with the outside world, which reveals that China at the end of the 1800s was an entity that was no longer closed off to the outside world. However, fascinatingly, most such narratives also tend to place a heavy emphasis upon the extent to which those within China attempted to channel such a development in the direction of preserving Chinese distinctiveness, and limiting the degree to which change breeched both the territorial and intellectual boundaries of the new country.   The anchor for such a constrained view of the period is located in the famous zhongti, waiyong (中学为体 西学为用) concept that appears to encapsulate how those in China at the time viewed the rest of the world. Chinese scholars first formulated this idea during the end stages of the Qing as an intellectual framework for making sense of the changing world they were confronting. As such zhongti waiyong was central to subsequent May 4th era intellectual debates.   The term is usually translated as “preserving a (Chinese) essence, making use of the foreign” and is generally seen as referring to the preference within the country to somehow save its culture and tradition even as it had to utilize external, western approaches to economics, politics, and culture, in order to survive in a world dominated by others. Most scholars peg this approach to the outside world to the work of Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909), especially as his influential essay, “Exhortation to Learning,” which contained a vigorous defense of the old, insular Chinese order, coupled with a limited acknowledgement of the need to change and modernize China through a limited importation of western learning. As Zhang was the first to articulate this position he is deserving of a prominent spot in reflections on this period. However, the enshrinement of his rather static interpretation of the concept is more an artifact of our own preference for continuing to imagine the country’s past as insular than it is reflective of the political and cultural debates of his time...(Continued)         * PLEASE NOTE: This paper is a draft of the introductory chapters of a manuscript that is in progress. Please do not cite or circulate without the author’s written permission.