China and the Future Status Quo Brantly Womack
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| Article China and the Future Status Quo Brantly Womack †, * † Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia *Corresponding author. Email: bwomack@virginia.edu Abstract
Although China’s underlying capabilities have developed at a fairly steady pace over the past 20 years and its ambitions have remained relatively stable, the shock of uncertainty and relative change since 2008 has driven an ongoing inter- action between heightened international anxiety over China’s rise and greater as- sertiveness on China’s part. In academic circles, the question is raised whether China is a status quo power willing to be a stakeholder in the existing international system, or whether it has ambitions to be a revisionist power challenging the exist- ing order. The resulting tension is especially acute in East Asia and in relations between China and the United States. Given the novel dynamics of the current era of global economic uncertainty, international normalcy should not be judged by the status quo of the post-Cold War era but rather by a ‘status ad quem’, a future situ- ation of sustainable relationships in a post-hegemonic era. The prospective diplo- macy of all states should be judged by the likelihood of their accommodation to a new era.
Since the beginning of the era of global financial uncertainty in 2008, China’s neighbours in East Asia have grown increasingly anxious while China has become more assertive. At the global level, the United States is treating China as a rival and China demands a special rela- tionship. Interactions within the spheres and between the levels of regional and global dip- lomacy before and after 2008 present vastly different pictures. And yet, a hundred years from now, observers seated comfortably in the balcony of world history might point out that in that apparently fateful year the underlying reality did not change much. China had long been more powerful than most of its neighbours, and it was not until long after that it achieved capabilities comparable to those of the United States. Of course, neither the know- ledge of what happens next nor the relaxed comfort of balcony seating is available to us. But it is likely that the absorbing and well-lit drama of daily diplomatic interaction will be influenced by the subterranean tectonics of reality, and vice-versa. The question of whether China plans to join or to change the world order also predates 2008. In the 1990s the American proponents of the ‘China threat’ gathered V C
Tsinghua University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2015, 115–137 doi: 10.1093/cjip/pov001 Advance Access Publication Date: 7 April 2015 Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cjip/article-abstract/8/2/115/353228 by guest on 07 November 2018 strength, 1 even though China was at that time improving relations with its neighbours, es- pecially those in Southeast and Central Asia. In the new century the fear of China as a rogue state has faded, but a new concern has appeared based on the prospect that China’s rapid growth would inevitably lead to a tipping point in the global balance of power, a power transition wherein China would challenge the American order as a revisionist power. 2 Given the history of rising powers, would not parity necessarily imply challenge? Other scholars have examined China’s ‘grand strategy’ for clues to its likely behaviour as a global power.
3 Some argue that China, like its fellow emerging countries in the BRICs or the G20, wants changes in the global system but does not want to challenge the system itself. 4 They argue that China is reformist but not revisionist. Still others point to the importance of on- going diplomatic interaction in determining the appearance of cooperation or conflict. 5 In a nutshell, I argue that the debate on whether or not China is a status quo power is misplaced. Certainly it is important to examine the continuities of China’s international be- haviour and of its emerging capabilities. Just as certainly, it is important to appreciate the qualitative change in regional and global anxieties about China since 2008. But the global financial crisis is also a watershed between an era in which the United States was considered to be and acted as a unipolar ‘hyperpower’ 6 possessing global hegemony, and a multi-nodal situation 7 where the global order is neither hegemonic nor chaotic. China is indeed becom- ing more important in this new era, but it is not the new hegemon. In order to pursue for- eign policies appropriate to a post-hegemonic order all states, China and the United States included, must adjust to a new reality of negotiated asymmetry. The old status quo is dead. The new status quo, the ‘status ad quem’, must emerge. Our attention should shift from the familiar ‘situation from which’ of the hegemonic status quo to a more forward-looking ‘situation to which’— a status ad quem of what is sustainable in a diversified and globalized world system. The argument hinges on an analysis of the continuities and changes surrounding the watershed of 2008. The first task of this essay is to dig for the underlying continuities of 1 See for example, Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York: Knopf, 1997). 2 Ronald Tammen and Jacek Kugler, ‘Power Transition and China-US Conflicts’,Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006), pp. 35–55; John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001); Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia I (New York: Norton, 2012).
3 Michael Swaine and Ashley Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, Future (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2000); Feng Zhang, ‘Rethinking China’s Grand Strategy: Beijing’s Evolving National Interests and Strategic Ideas in the Reform Era’, International Politics, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2012), pp. 318–45. 4 Miles Kahler, ‘Rising Powers and Global Governance: Negotiating Change in a Resilient Status Quo’, International Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (2013), pp. 711–29. 5 Jeffrey Legro, ‘What China will Want’, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007), pp. 515–34. 6 The inventor of the term was Hubert Ve´drine, Les Cartes de la France a l’heure de la Mondialisation (The Assets of France in the Era of Globalization)(Paris: Fayard, 2000). 7 Brantly Womack, ‘China’s Future in a Multinodal World Order’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 2 (2014), pp. 265–84. 116
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