Jörg Vogelmann | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalisation, Political Economics, grade: 1,0, Universität Stuttgart/University of Calgary (Canada) (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften/Department of Political Science), 308 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: This has been in both departments the best Magister thesis in this realm for years. Anyone coping with theory advancement and superpower relations should definitely read it! , abstract: The (re-)ascent of China as a global superpower will be among the key developments shaping the world order of the 21st century. This brings the current dominant player in world politics into the spotlight: the United States of America, the strategic focus of which has already shifted from Europe to East Asia. Given projections that China will surpass the U.S. in every major power indicator by 2050 but has traditionally shown unwillingness to integrate into the structures of the Pax Americana, the relationship or maybe rivalry between the old and the new superpower becomes crucial. With the fate of the world economy or even an atomic war being at stake, the research task is quite obvious, here.
Considering public and theoretic debate about (future) Sino-U.S. relations, it becomes clear that there exist two dominant alternative pictures correlating with two main schools of thought in International Relations. On the "neorealist" side, there is the picture of China "showing the United States the door" (Mearsheimer 2005b: 49). Accordingly, the People's Republic of China will self-consciously use its newly gained capabilities to challenge the American claim to leadership at least in East and South East Asia and (re-)establish (regional) hegemony on its own. On the "neoliberal" side, there is a China that is interested in "making money, not war" (Brzezinski 2005: 46). Its tremendous economic linkages to world and especially the U.S. economy will make a policy of confrontation towards the U.S. much too costly and enforce economic cooperation.
The thesis concentrates on these two belief systems to deal with the following research question: "Has the ascent of China as a new superpower evoked a relationship with the United States characterized by rough power politics or by peaceful, economically based cooperation?" It gives an empirical overview over trends in Sino-U.S. economic and military power and constructs the two dominant pictures of Sino-U.S. relations by drawing on interdependence, globalization, global governance and neoliberal institutionalist literature on the one side and neorealist strands of theories on the other side. The developed theoretic alternatives are empirically confronted by two case studies in post-Cold war East Asia: "The Taiwan issue" and "the North Korean Six-Party Talks". Thus, the thesis answers which picture of the superpower relationship has been more appropriate, evoking pivotal questions for further research.