By Asyura Salleh
China needs to build more alliances to challenge the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific.
China’s rapid industrialization as an emerging power has prompted much discussion of a power transition, in which a rising China displaces a declining America with potentially dire consequences in the process. Internal capabilities, particularly domestic industrialization, are an essential ingredient in national power. China has been industrializing rapidly, and could within the foreseeable future reach a rough parity in national power with the U.S., signaling the start of a power transition.
However, Woosang Kim goes beyond this internal capability argument to include external factors. He argues that alliance formation is also important in strengthening national power. In this argument, rising powers like China that seek to achieve power parity with the U.S. need to bolster their national power by pursuing both domestic industrialization and external alignment relationships. China has already made impressive strides in expanding its share of global GDP and trade. To further augment its national power, it should focus on aligning with other countries, especially with neighbors that are inside its targeted sphere of influence.
However, China’s recent behavior toward its neighbors has moved it in the opposite direction. Rather than aligning themselves with China, countries in the Asia-Pacific are turning to the U.S. How then, can China continue its pursuit of regional hegemony without inflaming regional fears? Instead of pursuing assertive actions against regional neighbors, China will need to consider an alternative approach, one that attracts potential allies, instead of repelling them. And in fact this would be possible, if China observed the alignment preferences of weaker regional neighbors such as the Philippines.
Read the full story at The Diplomat