Why Did the United States Facilitate China's Rise?

• In Event: Coffee & Lightning Round: Research in Five: Graduate Students II

Abstract

In recent years, scholars and practitioners have recognized China as the main rival to the United States globally, with increasing concerns about the possibility of China taking over as the world’s leading power. However, the current situation has its roots in the history of the past fifty years. My research puzzle is: Why did the United States end up helping China’s rise and thereby raising a peer competitor? My research looks at U.S. strategy vis-à-vis China in three periods: (i) U.S. opening to China and de facto alliance (1970-1989), (ii) U.S.-China mix of cooperation and competition (1989-2009), and (iii) U.S.-China strategic competition (2009-2020). I argue that it was the liberal ordering mission, i.e. the expectation that U.S. engagement with Beijing will lead to China’s integration in the liberal international order and its internal liberalization, that drove U.S. strategy after the end of the Cold War. I juxtapose two “worlds,” the liberal hegemony world (à la Ikenberry), in which the international order shapes great powers, and the hegemonic stability world (à la Gilpin), in which great powers shape the international order. I argue that while U.S. administrations in the early post-Cold War period, thinking in a liberal hegemony framework, hoped that U.S. support for China’s global market access would lead to liberalization, U.S. engagement strategy, existing in the reality of a hegemonic stability world, instead produced a China with tremendously increased capabilities that has questioned the legitimacy of the U.S.-led order and positioned itself as a great-power challenger to Washington.

Author

• Zoltan Feher, The University of Texas in Austin