Status and the Rise of China

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

A growing body of scholarship finds that concerns over rank or status play an important role in shaping state behavior in world politics. With growing resources, rising powers such as China are increasingly able to finance their status ambitions, with profound consequences for world politics. What are the domestic and international drivers of China’s status ambitions? What are the implications of China’s pursuit of status for Chinese domestic politics, regional power dynamics, and world politics more broadly? Focusing on the case of China, this panel provides an in-depth examination of the drivers and consequences of Chinese status ambitions. The panelists use theoretically and methodologically rigorous and eclectic tools to assess these questions. Moreover, by focusing on Chinese status-seeking, these panelists are able to make not only important empirical findings, but also theoretical innovations to the literature on status, including the recent return to great power competition, domestic politics and legitimation, and the responses of middle powers.

Deborah Larson and Alexei Shevchenko begin the discussion by looking at the role of status in driving Chinese foreign policy. Drawing from Social Identity Theory (SIT), Larson and Shevchenko argue that the recent turn to competitive policies by China and Russia is driven by concerns over status. Larson and Shevchenko contend that SIT provides a useful framework for predicting the strategies states use to pursue status in world politics. Moreover, they argue that such a framework implies that the US should encourage rising powers such as China and Russia to pursue status through “soft” and creative channels, arguing that acts of “humiliation” may encourage these states to pursue more aggressive or belligerent policies.

Joslyn Barnhart Trager and Jiyoung Ko further interrogate the role of status in Chinese domestic politics by examining China’s use of nationalist rhetoric across time. Drawing from People’s Daily articles from 1946-2011, Barnhart Trager and Ko systematically examine when Chinese leaders employ nationalist rhetoric. Ko and Barnhart Trager find strong evidence that Chinese leaders are likely to make references to national humiliation or rejuvenation when they seek to divert domestic attention or when they recover material symbols of past status.

In a similar vein, Lincoln Hines interrogates the theoretical micro-foundations undergirding this work by examining whether status-seeking efforts actually improve regime legitimacy domestically or perceptions of rank internationally. To assess the role of Chinese status seeking, Hines utilizes a real-world survey experiment to examine domestic and international perceptions of Chinese status-seeking. Using the example of China’s Chang’e 4 spacecraft landing on the dark side of the moon, Hines assesses whether status-seeking efforts improve perceptions of regime performance and whether it translates to increasing rank internationally. Alternating vignettes focusing on status and economic performance, Hines provides a causal test for isolating the effects of status-seeking.

The last paper on the panel, by Kai He and Huiyun Feng, moves beyond China’s domestic context to examine the impact of China’s rise on status-seeking powers in China’s regional neighborhood. Integrating status scholarship with prospect theory, He and Feng examine the role of status-seeking when middle powers are in the domain of “status loss.” To assess these theoretical claims, He and Feng assess ASEAN’s “community” building efforts in the 2000s and Australia’s “provocative” policies against China in 2016-2017. Beyond assessing the implications of China’s rise for regional powers, He and Feng contribute to the understudied topic of status-seeking by middle powers.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 20: Foreign Policy

Chair

• Deborah Welch Larson UCLA Political Science Department

Discussants

• Yong Deng U.S. Naval Academy

• Reinhard Wolf Goethe University Frankfurt

Individual Presentations

• Seeking Status on the Dark Side of the Moon: Experimental Evidence from China - Lincoln Hines, Cornell University

• Inciting Nationalism: The Domestic and International Contexts of Status Rhetoric - Joslyn N. Barnhart, Wesleyan University; Jiyoung Ko, Bates College

• Great Power Rivalry? China, Russia and the Quest for Status in World Politics - Deborah Welch Larson, UCLA Political Science Department; Alexei Shevchenko, California State University, Fullerton

• Middle Powers and Risky Status Seeking Behavior - Kai He, Griffith University; Huiyun Feng, Griffith University