What Would Chinese Hegemony Look Like?

[mota bhai 2,675]

By Robert E. Kelly
February 10, 2014

Until recently, Asia was arguably “multipolar”—there was no one state large enough to dominate and many roughly equal states competed for influence. China’s dramatic rise has unbalanced that rough equity.

...

China’s rapid growth unnerves many states on its perimeter, from India, east to Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia, north to Taiwan, Japan, and Russia. Were these states to align, they might contain China in the same way the Japan, China, and NATO all worked to contain the U.S.S.R.

...

Since 2009 however, China has increasingly resorted to bullying and threats ... In the South China Sea it has pushed a very expansive definition of its maritime zone of control, and it recently faced down the Philippines in a dispute over the Scarborough Shoal in that sea ... A hard line seems to be working in the South China Sea. But China’s northeast Asian neighbors are far stronger and more capable than its southeast Asian ones. Most observers expect Japan, South Korea and the U.S. to push back, as indeed they have.

...

All this then sets up a bipolar contest between China and Japan, in the context of China’s rapid rise toward regional dominance.

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To be fair, it is not clear yet if indeed China seeks regional hegemony. But there is a growing consensus among American and Japanese analysts that this is indeed the case. By Chinese hegemony in Asia we broadly mean something akin to the United States’ position in Latin America. We do not mean actual conquest. Almost no one believes China intends to annex even its weakest neighbors like Cambodia or North Korea. Rather, analysts expect a zone of super-ordinate influence over neighbors.

For example, in 1823, U.S. president James Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, which warned all non-American powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere on pain of U.S. retaliation. This has worked reasonably well for almost 200 years. The U.S. has variously used force, aid, covert CIA assistance, trade, and so on to eject foreign powers from what Washington (condescendingly) came to call “America’s backyard.” Today, of course, such language seems disturbingly neocolonial, but many assume that the fundamental illiberalism of such spheres of influence do not worry non-democracies like China. A Sinic Monroe Doctrine would likely include some mix of the following:

- the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Japan and Korea,

- U.S. naval retrenchment from east Asia, perhaps as far back as Hawaii,

- a division of the Pacific into east/U.S. and west/China zones with a Chinese blue-water navy operating beyond the so-called second island chain running from Japan southeast to New Guinea,

- an RMB currency bloc in southeast Asia and possibly Korea,

- a regional trading zone,

- foreign policies from China’s neighbors broadly in sync with its own.

This is not going to happen soon of course. This is a project for the next several decades, just as U.S. power over Latin America came slowly through the nineteenth century. But such goals would broadly fit with what we have seen in the behavior of previous hegemons, including Imperial Japan and China, Rome, the British Empire, the U.S. in Latin America, and various German plans for Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The era of U.S. preponderance in Asia is coming to an end.

Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) is an associate professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University. More of his work may be found at his website, AsianSecurityBlog.wordpress.com.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/what-would-chinese-hegemony-look-like/

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

####### is a hegemony?

1: preponderant influence or authority over others : domination <battled for hegemony in Asia>

2: the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group

[mota bhai 2,675]

It's a word. I see you looked it up. Good.

[Pooky 3,786]

Can China hold together in its current form long enough to become a hegemony?

[mota bhai 2,675]

Can China hold together in its current form long enough to become a hegemony?

Let's say they lost a few lightly populated areas outside the core. Would it matter?

[Pooky 3,786]

Let's say they lost a few lightly populated areas outside the core. Would it matter?

If anything happens, it won't just be a few outlying areas. If societal, or financial imbalance causes significant problems, I can envisage China having significant cohesion difficulties.

A few low-population areas would make little difference to current policy, save to try bullying them back into the fold. A major dissociative fracture would alter the international dynamic forever, and may bring us one step closer to a multinational-dominated world political arena.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

It would look bad.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It's a word. I see you looked it up. Good.

It is one of those words one hears but never really uses in common parlance.

[mota bhai 2,675]

It is one of those words one hears but never really uses in common parlance.

I see it used a lot during my travels on the Internet.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I see it used a lot during my travels on the Internet.

You travel a different road, my man.

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

It would look bad.

To us? Yes. But to China? I think not so much, nor that they would care. They now own $1.3 trillion of our debt. Japan has $1.1 trillion. Methinks those numbers can become bargaining chips in the near future.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

To us? Yes. But to China? I think not so much, nor that they would care. They now own $1.3 trillion of our debt. Japan has $1.1 trillion. Methinks those numbers can become bargaining chips in the near future.

That amount is a small amount of our total debt, which is mostly owed to ourselves. So, not much a bargaining chip.

China in control, with current chinese quality, lack of concern for human life, poor problem-solving, would be horrible. A super-polluted world with stolen fake handbags and dead kids from eating milk mixed with plastic powder, and slave labor. Please, god, no.

[mota bhai 2,675]

That amount is a small amount of our total debt, which is mostly owed to ourselves. So, not much a bargaining chip.

+1 for that.

[GandD 5,966]

That amount is a small amount of our total debt, which is mostly owed to ourselves. So, not much a bargaining chip.

+1 for that.

No joke, the over exaggeration of that is quite common and quite annoying.

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

That amount is a small amount of our total debt, which is mostly owed to ourselves. So, not much a bargaining chip.

China in control, with current chinese quality, lack of concern for human life, poor problem-solving, would be horrible. A super-polluted world with stolen fake handbags and dead kids from eating milk mixed with plastic powder, and slave labor. Please, god, no.

Small today. Only about 8%. Let's see if it remains small.

What stolen handbags? They make them there...