Is COVID-Era Assertiveness in Chinese Foreign Policy Novel?
19 Oct 2021-China Report (SAGE PublicationsSage India: New Delhi, India)-Vol. 57, Iss: 4, pp 00094455211047068
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that this does not represent the behavior of the wolf-warrior diplomacy used by China in its handling of the COVID outbreak by an assertive foreign policy style referred to as "wolf-warriors diplomacy".
Abstract: China has responded to criticisms of its handling of the COVID outbreak by an assertive foreign policy style referred to as ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’. This study argues that this does not represent ...
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TL;DR: In this paper , the authors focus on the relationship between the COVID-19 health crisis and China's foreign policy and foreign relations, and demonstrate that the pandemic has been an aggravating factor contributing to the downward spiral of China's relations with the outside world as well as its own isolation.
Abstract: Using qualitative methods, this article focuses on the relationship between the COVID-19 health crisis and China’s foreign policy and foreign relations. My main argument is that since its outbreak in late 2019, the COVID-19 health crisis has deepened the tensions already existing between China and the United States, as well as China and the West in general. Other factors that appeared before the pandemic have also contributed to intensifying the Sino-US rivalry as well as Sino-European frictions. Nonetheless, Beijing’s proactive mask and vaccine diplomacy, its strict lockdown policy as well as its more aggressive nationalist and anti-western narrative have fed rather than alleviated these tensions. While China’s image in the Global South has remained largely positive, in the Global North, it has rapidly deteriorated. All in all, this paper demonstrates that the pandemic has been an aggravating factor contributing to the downward spiral of China’s relations with the outside world as well as its own isolation.
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TL;DR: The authors reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in a nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science and demonstrates that the existence of a coherent liberal theory has significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications.
Abstract: This article reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in a nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science. Liberal IR theory elaborates the insight that state-society relations—the relationship of states to the domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded—have a fundamental impact on state behavior in world politics. Societal ideas, interests, and institutions influence state behavior by shaping state preferences, that is, the fundamental social purposes underlying the strategic calculations of governments. For liberals, the configuration of state preferences matters most in world politics—not, as realists argue, the configuration of capabilities and not, as institutionalists (that is, functional regime theorists) maintain, the configuration of information and institutions. This article codifies this basic liberal insight in the form of three core theoretical assumptions, derives from them three variants of liberal theory, and demonstrates that the existence of a coherent liberal theory has significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications. Restated in this way, liberal theory deserves to be treated as a paradigmatic alternative empirically coequal with and analytically more fundamental than the two dominant theories in contemporary IR scholarship: realism and institutionalism.
2,124 citations
TL;DR: The emerging transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar distribution of global power presents a unique and unappreciated problem that largely explains why, contrary to the expectations of balance of power theory, a counterbalancing reaction to U.S. primacy has not yet taken place as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The emerging transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar distribution of global power presents a unique and unappreciated problem that largely explains why, contrary to the expectations of balance of power theory, a counterbalancing reaction to U.S. primacy has not yet taken place. The problem is that, under unipolarity and only unipolarity, balancing is a revisionist, not a status quo, behavior: its purpose is to replace the existing unbalanced unipolar structure with a balance of power system. Thus, any state that seeks to restore a global balance of power will be labeled a revisionist aggressor. To overcome this ideational hurdle to balancing behavior, a rising power must delegitimize the unipole's global authority and order through discursive and cost-imposing practices of resistance that pave the way for the next phase of full-fledged balancing and global contestation. The type of international order that emerges on the other side of the transition out of unipolarity depends on whether the emerg...
330 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors claim that globalization has led to fragmentation and decentralized networks of power relations, which does not explain how states increasingly "weaponize interdependence" by leveraging glo...
Abstract: Liberals claim that globalization has led to fragmentation and decentralized networks of power relations. This does not explain how states increasingly “weaponize interdependence” by leveraging glo...
282 citations
TL;DR: The so-called theory of hegemonic stability is a research program composed of two distinct theories as mentioned in this paper, namely, leadership theory and hegemony theory, which aims to explain the production of the international economic infrastructure.
Abstract: The so-called theory of hegemonic stability is a research program composed of two distinct theories. Leadership theory builds upon public goods models and seeks to explain the production of the international economic infrastructure. The theory is extended here by identifying its necessary and sufficient conditions and explicating when leadership is likely to be benevolent or coercive. Hegemony theory, subsuming three independent analytic traditions, focuses on the different structurally derived trade policy preferences of states and attempts to explain international economic openness. The core logic of each variant and questions for future research are examined. Neither leadership nor hegemony theory has been tested adequately by existing empirical studies. While theorists have generally failed to present their arguments in an appropriate fashion, empiricists have not been sufficiently sensitive to variations in the theory and have produced studies that suffer from inadequate theoretical and operational specification and theoretical "over-extension." At this stage, formal tests should not seek decisive disconfirmation of the research program but should aim to provide guidance for further theoretical refinement.
258 citations
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors applied the theory of moral realism to explain the role of the SFA strategy and argued that morality can increase both international political strength and the political legitimacy of a rising power.
Abstract: Since 2012, some scholars, both Chinese and foreign, have argued that China’s assertive foreign policy is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, after examining China’s foreign relations in the last two years, this paper finds that China has experienced improved relations rather than deteriorating ones. In comparison with the strategy of keeping a low profile (KLP), the strategy of striving for achievement (SFA) shows more efficiency in shaping a favorable environment for China’s national rejuvenation. The author applies the theory of moral realism to explaining the role of the SFA strategy and argues that morality can increase both international political strength and the political legitimacy of a rising power. The key difference between the KLP and the SFA is that the former focuses on economic gains and the latter seeks to strengthen political support. That is the reason that the SFA values the role of morality and the KLP does not. Due to these different goals, the SFA strategy differs from the KLP strategy in aspects of tenets, general layouts, working approaches, and methods. So far, the SFA has achieved progress beyond people’s expectation from Xi Jinping in 2012. Xi’s strong leadership may become a new case suitable for illustrating the theory of moral realism. The year of 2010 was a turning point for both China’s international status and its relations with some countries related to East Asia. In 2010, China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s to rank only behind the United States. The year of 2010 also witnessed rising tensions between China and the United States, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. These tensions intensified China’s domestic debate over the necessity of
230 citations