East Asian States’ Differing Options in Dealing with China
East Asian states adopt varied strategic responses to China’s rise—balancing, hedging, or bandwagoning—driven primarily by geography, democracy, and historical identity. These factors shape threat perceptions and policies, underscoring a complex regional landscape influenced by proximity, political systems, and collective memory.
Abundant literature is available on East Asian states’ efforts to position themselves vis-à-vis rising China. Relatively few systematic studies have, however, been conducted on the variant strategic responses by East Asian states to the rise of China, and even fewer have dealt with reasons for such variations. In our research, the menu for strategic responses reveals attempts at balancing, hedging, and bandwagoning with varying degrees of success. The factors that influence these states’ choices offer important clues about the emerging strategic landscape and changing attitudes and behaviours in this precarious region. In our study, we analysed the importance of seven factors, including national power, trade dependence, geography, international institutions, democracy, credible commitments, and shared identity.
Of the seven factors, geographical proximity, democracy, and identity have been the most crucial in determining the East Asian states’ strategic responses. First, geography is important. That is, locational vulnerability constrains the prospects for bandwagoning and promotes balancing. Second, democratic states are more likely to balance against China while bandwagoning prevailed among authoritarian ones. Third, identity also matters. We found that historically accumulated enmity facilitated balancing against China. Interestingly, one war with China did not drastically increase the likelihood of balancing, but iterated wars with China produced confrontational responses.
We also found that national power, trade dependence, international institutions, and alliances, factors that have been traditionally deemed important, have been relatively insignificant for this region. Perhaps, general theories of international relations formulated mainly with the experiences of Western major powers do not hold well for contemporary East Asia where most states are small or medium-sized with only modest aspirations.
Policy Implications
There are at least three implications from our study. First, the caveat that geography matters is reaffirmed. Excessive attention to the curse of proximity, however, may lead to fatalism. Our research shows that if one is an ally of the US, border contiguity with China would lead to balancing while no contiguity produces no balancing. With no contiguous border with China, a state would most likely hedge when it is a US ally.
Second, the importance of democracy has two ramifications. For one, shared norms and institutions do matter, probably as much as guns and butter. For another, not only the democracy-authoritarian divide matters, but the level of democracy among democratic states is also important. Overall, the effect of democracy was mixed as democratic states displayed tendencies of either balancing or hedging. While states with high levels of democracy tended to balance against China, the tendency for hedging was considerably high for states with moderate levels of democracy.
Third, identity also affected a state’s strategic choice. Historical memory constrains foreign policy decisions. The shadow of history looms large in shaping threat perceptions and framing policies toward China.
Prospects
Geography is impossible to change. Nor is China likely to alter its stance of using power and influence if necessary. In a foreseeable future, the atlas of threat perception in East Asia is likely to remain largely unchanged. The only variable could be the credibility of America’s commitments to the region and the regional states’ will to adjust their course of action in tandem.
Democracy for the most part is in retreat in the US, East Asia, and elsewhere in the world. That is, the distance between elected dictators and selected tyrants has gotten shorter. While states may reawake with the blessing of prudent leadership, as well as with watershed events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the current trend of democratic backsliding continuing, the proclivity toward hedging may increase in democratic states in East Asia.
Identity matters dearly. While East Asian states’ historical memories of China are given, the respective image of the two titans–the US and China–in the region may become an increasingly crucial factor. While the rise of a neo-Sinocentric order may remind China’s regional neighbors of the plight of their societies under the Son of Heaven, if America should become incapable of presenting an alternative vision of a better future, they may navigate more toward the Middle Kingdom.
These insights are derived from a recently published journal article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs
Hun Joon Kim is Professor in Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University. Jae Ho Chung is Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
