Case Study: Can the Rise of China Be Peaceful? Using Structural Realism

Can the Rise of China Be Peaceful?

Different Structural Realism see the rise of China a different way
- Offensive Realism: US-China competition → central war
- Defensive Realism: US-China balance of power → peace

the best guarantee of survival is to become hegemon
- global hegemony is not practical or sustainable
- regional hegemony is possible
Example

US attained regional hegemony in Western Hemisphere in 1898, not global hegemony.
Regional hegemon wants to stop regions it doesn’t control from having another regional hegemon
- It wants the uncontrolled regions to be divided and competed for among great powers and not with the regional hegemon
Example
- United States stopped 4 potential regional hegemons during its reign:
- Imperial Germany
- Imperial Japan
- Nazi Germany
- Soviet Union
Offensive Realists says China’s next step in becoming a regional hegemony is
- to maximize the power gap between China and its neighbors
- to try and push US’s military presence from Asia
Offensive realists says US’s reaction to China’s rise will be
- to try to contain and weaken China
- to regain control or re-balance Asia
Offensive Realists says China’s neighbors
- will fear China’s rise
- will join the US in containing China’s power
Example

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and China all joined the United States in containing the rise of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Defensive Realism agrees that China will want more power, and its neighbors will join the US to contain China.
But it doesn’t make sense for a great power to seek hegemony because its neighbors will join another regional hegemon and great powers to defeat it.
Nuclear Weapons will be a deterrence for aggression
- India, Russia, and US all have nuclear weapons and relatively close to China
- Japan also can easily get nuclear weapons (US?)
- These countries will also form a coalition to stop China if needed
China has no incentive to conquer other Asian countries
- China’s economic growth isn’t because of foreign endeavors
- In the age of nationalism, there would be fierce resistance from the population if China decides to dominate them
  - The benefits is smaller than the cost of expansion
Defensive Realism says China will aim for limited power in Asia
- it won’t try to dominate Asia, but just to ‘make China great’
- therefore China is easy to contain and cooperate with
Defensive Realists still leaves open that the rise of China might not be paceful due to similar ’domestic political pathologies’ that Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany made

A Structural Realist who believes in uni-polarity for peace believes China’s rise will replace uni-polarity to bi-polarity and could lead to multi-polarity in the future. Because the number of potential war partners increases it’s more war prone.
Some Structural Realists believes bi-polarity is more peaceful than uni- or multi- as the case with the Cold War and the lessons learned from it.
Structural Realists who believes in preponderance peace says China’s rise will threaten the security of US who will have strong incentive launch a preventive war against China.