By Shannon Tiezzi
The U.S. faces important choices in the future as it navigates its alliance with Japan and its rivalry with China.
China has been rising for over three decades. So why there has not been a genuinely confrontational Sino-U.S. stand-off or a new Cold War between these two top economies? In fact, there have been several symbolic incidents between Washington and Beijing after the honeymoon period that lasted during most of the 1980s. A list of these incidents would include the Yinhe Incident in 1993, the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, the Hainan Incident in the South China Sea in 2001, and the narrowly-avoided collision in the same waters earlier in 2013. Have these incidents been a series of trial attempts between the U.S. and China to test each other’s respective bottom lines before reaching a total stand-off? The truth is: both countries have stumbled through all the discord, conflicts and collisions, and probably will have to continue to slowly walk together through the years to come. For China, a direct confrontation with the dominant incumbent power through conventional approaches like military alliance-building is unwise and therefore cannot be on Beijing’s agenda.
The doubts and suspicions remain, however. Many view a rising China as a confrontation to the dominant western system, usually by referring to power transition theory’s discussion of “power parity” and the “probability of war.” However, we need to think about this theory’s emphasis on the dominant power’s privileged position to accommodate or engage the rising power. The U.S.’s strategies, tactics, policies, and skills with regard to a rising China, therefore, have long-lasting significances transcending the region of East Asia.
Take the U.S.-Japan alliance, for example. This alliance relationship has been emphasized by both Washington and Tokyo on several occasions, particularly after the eruption of maritime disputes in the East China Sea. The Americans and Japanese may be accounting for facts: the rise of China may not be reversed and China will probably overpass the U.S. economically in less than 20 years. Therefore a strengthened U.S.-Japan alliance will help to ensure the strategic balance in the region in the near future at least. This seems to be a rational choice for a relatively declining U.S. to deal with an increasingly more powerful China.
Read the full story at The Diplomat