Beyond Power Transitions

"China's threat to U.S. global hegemony has dominated international policy discussion for years. But the power transition debate-whether the growing power, China, is bound to challenge and overtake the bigger power, the United States-relies on a theory almost exclusively based on European examples from the past 400 years. Xinru Ma and David Kang argue in this concise, incisive book that-as China is not an eighteenth-century European state fighting for survival against a number of similarly-sized states-China's example can shed new light on how great powers behave. China is a massive and ancient civilization centrally located in the East Asian region. Upon closer inspection, China itself has historically worried very little about expansionist war from a rising power, let alone carrying one out. An examination of over 1,500 years in East Asian history reveals that power transition wars almost never created a transition in power between different nations. More prevalent in East Asian history is dynastic transition, with seventeen out of twenty regime changes resulting from internal rebellion. Had power transition theory started with East Asian history rather than European history, it would emphasize the domestic risks and constraints on great powers. If scholars and policymakers want a meaningful discussion of a way out of today's great power conflict between the United States and China, rather than threat inflation, then they need a more careful analysis of both contemporary China and the historical record. The lessons of East Asian history are clear: both contemporary China and the United States face considerable internal challenges that are more pressing than external threats"--

China’s Challenges and International Order Transition introduces an integrated conceptual framework of “international order” categorized by three levels (power, rules, and norms) and three issue-areas (security, political, and economic). Each contributor engages one or more of these analytical dimensions to examine two questions: (1) Has China already challenged this dimension of international order? (2) How will China challenge this dimension of international order in the future? The contested views and perspectives in this volume suggest it is too simple to assume an inevitable conflict between China and the outside world. With different strategies to challenge or reform the many dimensions of international order, China’s role is not a one-way street. It is an interactive process in which the world may change China as much as China may change the world. The aim of the book is to broaden the debate beyond the “Thucydides Trap” perspective currently popular in the West. Rather than offering a single argument, this volume offers a platform for scholars, especially Chinese scholars vs. Western scholars, to exchange and debate their different views and perspectives on China and the potential transition of international order.

Questions about the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China have dominated international policy discussion for years. But the leading theory of power transitions between a declining hegemon and a rising rival is based exclusively on European examples, such as the Peloponnesian War, as chronicled by Thucydides, as well as the rise of Germany under Bismarck and the Anglo-German rivalry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What lessons does East Asian history offer, for both the power transitions debate and the future of U.S.-China relations? Examining the rise and fall of East Asian powers over 1,500 years, Beyond Power Transitions offers a new perspective on the forces that shape war and peace. Xinru Ma and David C. Kang argue that focusing on the East Asian experience underscores domestic risks and constraints on great powers, not relative rise and decline in international competition. They find that almost every regime transition before the twentieth century was instigated by internal challenges and even the exceptions deviated markedly from the predictions of power transition theory. Instead, East Asia was stable for a remarkably long time despite massive power differences because of common understandings about countries’ relative status. Provocative and incisive, this book challenges prevailing assumptions about the universality of power transition theory and shows why East Asian history has profound implications for international affairs today.

By succinctly integrating power transition theory and national policy, this outstanding team of scholars explores emerging issues in world politics in the 21st century, including proliferation and deterrence, the international political economy, regional hierarchies, and the role of alliances. Blending quantitative and traditional analyses, theory and practice, history and informed predictions, Power Transitions draws a map of the new world that will stimulate, provoke, and offer solutions. Authors include: Mark Abdollohian, Carole Alsharabati, Brian Efird, Jacek Kugler, Douglas Lemke, Allan C. Stam III, Ronald L. Tammen, and A.F.K Organski.

As China emerges as a global force in the twenty-first century, questions of how existing great powers will navigate the geopolitical transition loom large. In Fateful Transitions, Daniel M. Kliman revisits historic power shifts to shed light on enduring patterns in international relations, demonstrating that the regime type of ascendant powers greatly influences global interactions. Since the late nineteenth century, the world's major democracies have tended to accommodate or conciliate ascendant democratic states. Certain attributes of democracy, such as a free press and domestic checks and balances, encourage trust during power shifts, whereas closed and autocratic regimes on the ascent tend to produce a cycle of suspicion, competition, and confrontation. Drawing on democratic peace theory and power transition theory, Kliman compares Great Britain's embrace of U.S. ascendancy in the early twentieth century to its confrontational stance toward autocratic Germany and later U.S. mistrust of the Soviet Union. Within this geopolitical context, he evaluates the interactions between China and current great powers, the United States and Japan. Building on this analysis, Kliman offers new insights into the dynamics of power shifts and explores their implications for how today's established and emerging powers can successfully navigate fateful transitions.

A novel, interdisciplinary account of the global politics of producing, financing, governing and mobilising energy system transformation.

Take a new look at healing, health, life, even death, and daily challenges and transitions. Transition and Survival Technologies takes readers further on their inner as well as inter-dimensional journeys into the worlds of healing, transitioning, shifting realities, dying ?????? into the worlds the human consciousness has a right to access and can indeed access to heal and survive here and beyond. We can free our attention to focus upon something much more subtle, abstract, and more real than our so-called "worldly" experiences. Once we are fully liberated and our perceptions set free to see, a new kind of understanding or vision of reality can come to us. We can then see ourselves as something far more, far greater, than we believed ourselves to be.

The United States and China have experienced many changes in their relations in the past 30 years. Some international security experts posit that the most profound one has begun-an apparent power transition between the two nations. This potentially titanic change, it is argued, was set in motion by Chi¬na's genuine and phenomenal economic development over the past decade, or so. Clearly, China's impact on the United States and the U.S.-led international sys¬tem has been growing steadily.Historically, most great power transitions were consummated by war. Can China and the United States avoid a deadly contest and spare the world another catastrophe? The good news is that the two nations expressed goodwill in the mid-2000s, with China's promise of peaceful development and the U.S. call for China to become a responsible stakeholder in the ex¬tant international system. The bad news is that China and the United States still have many unsettled issues, some of which directly involve the two nations' core interests and others indirectly entangled with China's neighbors. Those issues can lead to the two nations stumbling into unintended clashes, hence triggering a repeat of the great power tragedies of the past.Some scholars predict that over the next 30 years and beyond, this apparent power transition process will continue to be a defining factor in the U.S.-China relationship. What can we expect from China and the United States with respect to the future of inter¬national relations? As China's economic, political, cultural, and military influences continue to grow globally, what kind of a global power will China be¬come? What kind of a relationship will China develop with the United States? How does the United States maintain its leadership in world affairs and develop a working relationship with China that encourages it to join hands with the United States to shape the world in constructive ways?In this monograph, Dr. David Lai offers an en¬gaging discussion of these questions and others. His analysis addresses issues that trouble U.S. as well as Chinese leaders. Dr. Lai has taken painstaking care to put the conflicting positions in perspective, most no¬tably presenting the origins of the conflicts, highlight¬ing the conflicting parties' key opposing positions (by citing their primary or original sources), and point¬ing out the stalemates. His intent is to remind U.S., as well as Chinese, leaders of the complicated nature of U.S.-China relations, during a power transition and to encourage them to look at the existing conflicts in this new light. He also intends for the analysis to help the two nations' leaders look beyond their parochial positions and take constructive measures to manage this complicated process-one that will affect future international relations in seminal ways.The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution to the discussion of this important issue.