Why China's Rise Will Be Peaceful: Hierarchy and Stability in East Asia

Realpolitik pessimists, power transition theorists, and others see China's rise as inherently destabilizing. However, China has already been growing rapidly for almost three decades, and there is little evidence that the region is devolving into balancing, nor that China's rise is causing undue alarm in the region. China's expected emergence as the most powerful state in East Asia has been accompanied with more stability than pessimists believed because hierarchy, not balancing, is emerging in East Asia. A hierarchic system is one that involves a dominant power that does not fold secondary states under its wing in empire, and yet also does not cause other states to balance against it. Although there are potential costs associated with a rising power, just as important to consider are the potential benefits to secondary states. Thus a secondary state's decision will depend in part on the tradeoff between the costs and benefits the rising power potentially provides. Furthermore, on the one hand, China has provided credible information about its capabilities and intentions to its neighbors. On the other hand, East Asian states actually believe China's claims, and hence do not fear -- and instead seek to benefit from - China's rise. This shared understanding about China's preferences and limited aims short-circuits the security dilemma.

David Kang has scholarly interests in both business-government relations and international relations, with a focus on Asia. At the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, he teaches courses on doing business in Asia, and also manages teams of MBAs that conduct in-country consulting projects for multinational companies in Asia. His book Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002), was named by Choice as a 2003 Outstanding Academic Title. He is also author of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, co-authored with Victor Cha (Columbia University Press, 2003). He is a Stanford alumnus (B.A. 1988, anthropology and international relations) and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.