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1592. Stirring up the South China Sea (II): Regional Responses
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- The South China Sea dispute between China and some of its South East Asian neighbours – Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei – has reached an impasse. Increasingly assertive positions among claimants have pushed regional tensions to new heights. Driven by potential hydrocarbon reserves and declining fish stocks, Vietnam and the Philippines in particular are taking a more confrontational posture with China. All claimants are expanding their military and law enforcement capabilities, while growing nationalism at home is empowering hardliners pushing for a tougher stance on territorial claims. In addition, claimants are pursuing divergent resolution mechanisms; Beijing insists on resolving the disputes bilaterally, while Vietnam and the Philippines are actively engaging the U.S. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). To counter diminishing prospects of resolution of the conflicts, the countries should strengthen efforts to promote joint development of hydrocarbon and fish resources and adopt a binding code of conduct for all parties to the dispute.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, Maritime Commerce, Natural Resources, and Food
- Political Geography:
- China, Malaysia, Israel, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and Brunei
1593. Supersized cities: China's 13 megalopolises
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- The rise and decline of great cities past was largely based on their ability to draw the ambitious and the restless from other places. China's cities are on the rise. Their growth has been fuelled both by the large-scale internal migration of those seeking better lives and by government initiatives encouraging the expansion of urban areas. The government hopes that the swelling urban populace will spend more in a more highly concentrated retail environment, thereby helping to rebalance the Chinese economy towards private consumption.
- Topic:
- Communism, Demographics, Development, Economics, Migration, and Urbanization
- Political Geography:
- China and Israel
1594. China's Geostrategic Search for Oil
- Author:
- John Lee
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Washington Quarterly
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- In 2000, Asia analyst Robert A. Manning presciently argued that the likelihood of future conflict over energy resources would increase as rising Asian giants such as China shifted away from an economic toward a strategic approach to energy security.Since then, as China's energy consumption has expanded and its rise has become the dominant geopolitical issue of our time, Beijing's energy security policy has become one of the major discussion topics.
- Political Geography:
- China, Beijing, and Asia
1595. NATO and India: The politics of strategic convergence
- Author:
- David Scott
- Publication Date:
- 01-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Politics
- Institution:
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Abstract:
- In this article, I argue that after having experienced a distinctly cool relationship throughout most of the post-war period and for the 10 years following the end of the Cold War, India and North Atlantic Organization (NATO) are now gradually moving towards each other. Indeed, during the past decade, NATO's 'out-of-area' operations have taken it eastwards from the Mediterranean, while India's 'extended neighbourhood' framework has brought it westwards from the Indian subcontinent. This has created a geopolitical overlap between these two actors, most notably in Afghanistan but also elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Common advocacy of liberal democracy and overt concerns over jihadist destabilization have brought these two actors together. In NATO's post-Cold War search for relevance and India's post-Soviet search for partners, they have found each other. Unstated potential concerns over China are also a feature in this strategic convergence. However, while NATO has adopted a flexible range of 'Partnership' frameworks, India's sensitivity on retaining 'strategic autonomy' will limit their cooperation to informal ad hoc arrangements.
- Topic:
- NATO and Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, China, India, and Soviet Union
1596. Rethinking China's grand strategy: Beijing's evolving national interests and strategic ideas in the reform era
- Author:
- Feng Zhang
- Publication Date:
- 05-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Politics
- Institution:
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Abstract:
- The question of China's grand strategy is of great importance for understanding the international impact of China's rise. Both Western and Chinese scholars dispute whether China has developed a coherent grand strategy in the reform era. The main reason for the controversy seems to lie as much in theoretical and methodological assumptions about defining and analyzing grand strategy as in empirical validity. This article contributes to the debate by adopting a novel theoretical approach to analyzing grand strategy by seeing it as the conjunction of national interests and strategic ideas. It examines China's evolving national interests and strategic ideas in the reform period in order to clarify the exploratory, evolutionary and adaptive nature of policy change. China cannot be said to have developed a premeditated grand strategy during this period. Even though one may still be able to rationalize elements of China's foreign policies into a grand strategy, it comes at the cost of missing their changing nature.
- Political Geography:
- China
1597. Editorial Note
- Author:
- Nicola Casarini
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- China is set to become the world's largest economy. As the country becomes richer, it is likely to become more influential in foreign and military affairs. This raises the question as to the impact that an increasingly ascendant China would have on the rest of the world, including whether the West will continue to maintain the supremacy that it has enjoyed over the last centuries. This is a subject that has received a fair amount of attention in the last years. Suffice it to recall here books like Martin Jacques's When China Rules the World and James Kynge's China Shakes the World to get a sense of the awe and anxiety that pervades the Western world as China establishes its global footprint. Henry Kissinger, in his latest On China observes that President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao ''presided over a country that no longer felt constrained by the sense of apprenticeship to Western technology and institutions'', and that the economic meltdown that began in America in 2008 ''seriously undermined the mystique of Western economic prowess'' among the Chinese. According to Kissinger, these developments have prompted a ''new tide of opinion in China to the effect that a fundamental shift in the structure of the international system was taking place''.The sentiment, both in China and in the West, is that the Chinese economy will soon reach a position of pre-eminence. According to the IMF, this could happen as early as 2016. But will China be able to sustain its current pace of economic growth for the next decades? Or will domestic and/or external factors derail China's rise?
- Political Geography:
- China
1598. Peaceful Rise: China's Modernisation Trajectory
- Author:
- Cui Liru
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- China intends to realise its national resurgence and modernisation through a peaceful path by integrating into or accepting and participating in the existing international system. With reform and opening-up as its hallmark, China's growth model is in a sense a marriage between Oriental and Occidental civilisations in the age of globalisation. Openness and inclusiveness are the intrinsic attributes of this model. China's diplomacy since 1978 is essentially an extension of the national modernisation drive, its chief task, basic policies and behavioural patterns being the creation of an international environment conducive to this endeavour.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- China
1599. Thinking about China's Future
- Author:
- David Shambaugh
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- China's modernisation mission is enduring but there continues to be a large mismatch in China's view of the world and how the world views China. This rejoinder questions China's commitment to political reform, discusses the economic challenges facing China and wonders whether there is a distinct and unique China growth model. Assessing China's impact as a rising power on the international system, it critiques China's global diplomacy and the future of US–China relations. The rejoinder is more circumspect on these issues than Cui's original article.
- Political Geography:
- China
1600. China's Rise as an International Factor: Connecting the Dots
- Author:
- François Godement
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- The term "peaceful development" has created ambiguity. It fails to capture the extent to which China has become a global influence whose economic policy decisions are essential to the world multilateral system. China's international strategy can no longer be guided only by the quest for "stability" and by the principle of non-interference, because change and interdependence are a hallmark of this century. Neither can a relation with the United States alone define China's international strategy. Hopefully, China will understand the usefulness for rising powers to make long-lasting compromises, and it will strengthen instead of weaken a set of international institutions that have allowed for the most prosperous and peaceful era in human history.
- Political Geography:
- United States and China