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1742. International relations studies in China: history, trends, and prospects
- Author:
- David Shambaugh
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
- Institution:
- Japan Association of International Relations
- Abstract:
- International relations (IR) studies in China have developed considerably over the past three decades. The field is now well established with 49 degree-granting institutions, as well as a series of 'think tanks' that produce policy-related analyses of international issues. Recent survey research of publication trends in the field reveals a significant new diversity of research subject areas, with an increased emphasis on topics associated with Western 'liberal' IR theory and international political economy, while at the same time revealing a tenacity of 'realist' topics such as major power relations. While the quantitative dimensions of the field have grown dramatically – institutions, faculty, publications – the overall quality of research remains very uneven across China and generally weak when compared internationally. This article surveys the historical development of the field, summarizes the current state of the field, and identifies challenges and opportunities for future development.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Development
- Political Geography:
- China
1743. Institutions and the great power bargain in East Asia: ASEAN's limited 'brokerage' role
- Author:
- Evelyn Goh
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
- Institution:
- Japan Association of International Relations
- Abstract:
- This article argues that in the post-Cold War strategic transition in East Asia, ASEAN has helped to create a minimalist normative bargain among the great powers in the region. The regional norms propagated through the 'ASEAN way', emphasizing sovereignty, non-intervention, consensus, inclusion, and informality were extremely important in the initial stages of bringing the great powers – especially China and the United States – to the table in the immediate post-Cold War period. During this time, ASEAN helped to institutionalize power relations legitimizing the role of the great powers as well as the 'voice' of smaller states in regional security management. But the process of institutionalizing great power relations contains further steps, and what ASEAN has achieved is well short of the kind of sustained cooperation on the part of the great powers that is so necessary to the creation of a new stable regional society of states. Moreover, ASEAN has provided the great powers with a minimalist normative position from which to resist the more difficult processes of negotiating common understanding on key strategic norms. At the same time, ASEAN's model of 'comfortable' regionalism allows the great powers to treat regional institutions as instruments of so-called 'soft' balancing, more than as sites for negotiating and institutionalizing regional 'rules of the game' that would contribute to a sustainable modus vivendi among the great powers. As such, ASEAN's role is limited in, and limiting of, the great power bargain that must underpin the negotiation of the new regional order. This is a task that the regional great powers (the United States, China, and Japan) must themselves undertake.
- Topic:
- Security and Cold War
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, China, and East Asia
1744. Energy Interests of the 'Great Powers' in Central Asia: Cooperation or Conflict?
- Author:
- Shamil Midkhatovich Yenikeyeff
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The International Spectator
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- The geographic proximity of Central Asia to Russia, China, the Caucasus and the Caspian region, as well as to the Middle East, makes this oil and gas-producing region a crucial and ever-developing player in regional and global energy markets. The method by which Central Asian producers choose to develop their hydrocarbon resources and export infrastructure will have significant implications for the plans for diversification of oil and gas supplies of Europe, China and India, as well as for Russia's energy exports to Europe. It is still too early to tell whether the economic and political incentives are strong enough to promote cooperation between the various actors or whether the energy interests of these key external powers are so diverse as to clash in Central Asia.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Europe, Central Asia, and Asia
1745. September 11 in Retrospect
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- It's tempting to see the 9/11 attacks as having fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy. It's also wrong. The Bush administration may have gone over the top in responding, but its course was less novel than generally believed. A quest for primacy and military supremacy, a readiness to act proactively and unilaterally, and a focus on democracy and free markets -- all are long-standing features of U.S. policy.
- Topic:
- Security and Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, China, and Middle East
1746. The Inevitable Superpower
- Author:
- Arvind Subramanian
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Is China poised to take over from the United States as the world's leading economy? Yes, judging by its GDP, trade flows, and ability to act as a creditor to the rest of the world. In fact, China's economic dominance will be far greater and come about far sooner than most observers realize.
- Topic:
- Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- United States and China
1747. The Middling Kingdom
- Author:
- Salvatore Babones
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Foreign Affairs
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- By any measure, China's economic growth has been unprecedented, even miraculous. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese economy grew by an average of 9.6 percent per year between 1990 and 2010. At the beginning of the recent global financial crisis, many feared that the Chinese growth engine would grind to a halt. In late 2008, Chinese exports collapsed, triggering fears of political instability and popular revolt in the country. In the end, however, the global economic crisis turned out to be little more than a pothole on the road of China's economic growth. Inflationary pressures may now be building up in China, and China's property bubble may be threatening to burst, but most economists continue to predict rapid growth for the country well into the future. Although their forecasts vary widely, they seem to share the view that China's growth will be fast -- if not as fast as it has been -- and that this rate of growth will continue for decades. These predictions are at once cautious about the near future (China's performance will not be as extraordinary as it has been) and optimistic about the distant future (they see no end to China's upward trajectory). By coincidence or design, they are moderated extrapolations of current trends. For example, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel believes that China will grow at an average annual rate of eight percent until 2040, by which time it will be twice as rich as Europe (in per capita terms) and its share of global GDP will be 40 percent (compared with 14 percent for the United States and five percent for the European Union). Other economists are slightly more cautious: Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predict that China will grow by 5.6 percent per year through 2050.
- Topic:
- Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- China
1748. Renminbi Rules: The Conditional Imminence of the Reserve Currency Transition
- Author:
- Arvind Subramanian
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- Against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis and the ongoing rapid changes in the world economy, the fate of the dollar as the premier international reserve currency is under scrutiny. This paper attempts to answer whether the Chinese renminbi will eclipse the dollar, what will be the timing of, and the prerequisites for this transition, and which of the two countries controls the outcome. The key finding, based on analyzing the last 110 years, is that the size of an economy—measured not just in terms of GDP but also trade and the strength of the external financial position—is the key fundamental correlate of reserve currency status. Further, the conventional view that sterling persisted well beyond the strength of the UK economy is overstated. Although the United States overtook the United Kingdom in terms of GDP in the 1870s, it became dominant in a broader sense encompassing trade and finance only at the end of World War I. And since the dollar overtook sterling in the mid-1920s, the lag between currency dominance and economic dominance was about 10 years rather than the 60-plus years traditionally believed. Applying these findings to the current context suggests that the renminbi could become the premier reserve currency by the end of this decade, or early next decade. But China needs to fulfill a number of conditions—making the reniminbi convertible and opening up its financial system to create deep and liquid markets—to realize renminbi preeminence. China seems to be moving steadily in that direction, and renminbi convertibility will proceed apace not least because it offers China's policymakers a political exit out of its mercantilist growth strategy. The United States cannot in any serious way prevent China from moving in that direction.
- Topic:
- Economics, Markets, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States and China
1749. The nature of a friendship: making sense of Sino-Pakistani relations
- Author:
- Marco Mezzera
- Publication Date:
- 09-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
- Abstract:
- The May 2nd 2011 Abbottabad raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden heightened long-standing tensions between America and Pakistan. What little trust still existed between the establishments of the two countries almost completely disappeared. It is in this context that Pakistan made immediately clear that it was not dependent on Washington's benevolence and that it could turn at any time to its “all-weather friend” China for assistance that is free of criticism. Originating more than 60 years earlier, the Sino-Pakistani relationship until then had gone relatively unnoticed by most observers. After Abbottabad, while American policymakers were busy questioning the reliability of the Pakistani state and suspending some of the huge flows of military aid that had been poured into that country since 2001, Islamabad was swiftly taking countermeasures.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Terrorism, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, China, and America
1750. The Steppe and Early European State Formation
- Author:
- Iver B. Neumann
- Publication Date:
- 08-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler
- Institution:
- Uluslararasi Iliskiler
- Abstract:
- It is not a self-evident thing for a group of scholars to invite an outsider who has studied the home turf of that group to open one of their conferences. I am extremely pleased to be here, and I want to make the most of the opportunity by calling attention to an area of study that my previous work has been pointing me to, and that I believe we who study International Relations (IR) should make our own. I am talking about a relation between two places in time. The relation is the one between nomads and sedentaries. The places are the Eurasian steppe and the sedentary polities to its west. By the Eurasia steppe I mean that vast tract of land that stretched from the Mongolian-Turkic homelands around Karakorum, north of the agricultural lands of the Chinese, the Persians and the Byzantines, all the way to where the grasslands started to give way to forest, and where there lived Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes. The time is what Europeans call the middle ages.
- Topic:
- International Relations
- Political Geography:
- China, Europe, and Eurasia