AIIB NEG (Starter Pack

Version)

Case

Squo solves
US policy goldilocks signals coordination with existing
institutions while encouraging Chinese best practices
AIIB failure is likely but the ball is in THEIR court.
Dreyer, 15 (June Teufel Dreyer a Senior Fellow in FPRIs Asia Program as
well as a member of the Orbis Board of Editors, Professor of Political Science
at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, The Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank: Who Will Benefit?, http://www.fpri.org/article/2015/04/theasian-infrastructure-investment-bank-who-will-benefit/, CMR)
Beijing may have overreached itself . It has backed two other financial
institutions, both to be headquartered in Beijing and predominantly financed
by the PRC: a BRICS bank in spite of the problems in several of the BRICS
economies, and a Shanghai Cooperation Bank, despite objections from
Moscow.[15] And this at a time when the PRCs economic growth rate is slowing,
resulting in the postponement of structural reforms deemed necessary to
enhance its future prospects. A first test will be at the end of April, when members will meet to
Still,

discuss share distribution and select officials. Jin Liqun a well-regarded former PRC deputy finance minister
and former ADB vice-president is expected to be named the AIIBs governor. Several states, Indonesia
most publicly, have lobbied to have one of their nationals as deputy governors and put forth various
conditions. Satisfying their competing demands will require careful coordination and the utmost diplomacy.

For now, Washington seems to be taking a wait and see attitude . Treasury
Secretary Jacob Lew, in Beijing for consultations, said he welcomed the new
bank and would encourage it to coordinate with existing financial institutions
such as the World Bank. However, he also warned that poor lending and
governance standards could harm rather than help global development.[16]
Asian Development Bank officials have also pledged cooperation. The burden is now on Beijing
to deliver on its ambitious plans and to live up to the promises it has made.

Xis visit was a game-changer US and China committed

to truce over AIIB solves relations.
Donnan, 15 (Shawn, White House declares truce with China over AIIB,
Sept 27, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23c51438-64ca-11e5-a28b50226830d644.html, CMR)
US officials have declared what amounts to a truce in their campaign over Chinas
Asian infrastructure bank, claiming they have secured commitments from
Beijing to address Washingtons concerns as well as a meaningfully
increase its financial contributions to the World Bank and other potential
regional rivals to the new institution. The US has declined to join the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank and been leading what many allies and others see as a failed campaign against it.
Together with the New Development Bank being founded with other Brics economies, the AIIB represents
perhaps the biggest challenge yet mounted to the Bretton Woods international financial architecture

The latest move highlights how eager US president Barack Obama

and his administration are to put that chapter of their engagement with China
behind them and resume normal relations on international economics. During
established in 1944.

last weeks state visit by Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, the Obama administration also reiterated its
pledge to back Chinas bid for the inclusion of its currency, the renminbi, in an elite International Monetary
Fund basket of reserve currencies as long as Beijing is declared worthy by the IMF. Senior administration

Washington had secured a pledge from Beijing to

increase its financial contributions to the World Bank and regional
development banks. The first step, they said, would be an increase in Chinas contribution to the
officials said that during Mr Xis visit,

International Development Association, the World Banks main concessional lending facility for its poorest

China had also made a

commitment that the AIIB, and any other new and future institutions it was involved in, would
abide by the highest international environmental and governance standards,
addressing what the US and campaign groups have said is one of its concerns
about the new bank. We feel that is extremely positive, said one senior
administration official. That is a breakthrough . The commitments were laid out, albeit in vague
client countries and similar ones at regional development banks.

terms, in a joint fact sheet about the two countries economic discussions during Mr Xis two-day visit to

the two countries reaffirmed their commitment to existing

international financial institutions and pledged to further strengthen the
World Bank as well as regional banks in Asia, Africa and Latin America . China
Washington. In it,

intends to meaningfully increase its role as a donor in all these institutions, the joint statement said. Both
sides acknowledge that for new and future institutions to be significant contributors to the international
financial architecture, these institutions, like the existing international financial institutions, are to be

That both sides

are keen to put the AIIB dispute and any conflict over the governance of the
existing institutions behind them was also evident in Mr Xis public statements
during his visit. At a press conference with Mr Obama on Friday, the Chinese president said the US
and China had agreed to step up their co-operation in areas such as the G20,
World Bank and IMF. China is the current international systems builder, contributor and developer
operated with the existing high environmental and governance standards, it said.

and participant, and also beneficiary, he said. We are willing to work with all other countries to firmly
defend the fruits of victory of the second world war, and the existing international system. He also
defended the establishment of the AIIB and Beijings One Belt One Road plan to build a new Silk Road to
Europe, which many experts see as a potential strategic rival to the US-led 12-country Trans-Pacific
Partnership. These initiatives are open, transparent, inclusive, he said. And we welcome the US and
other parties to actively participate in them.

Obama softening U.S. stance to AIIB --- co-financing will

reverse perception of containment and resolve diplomatic
debacle
Talley, 15 (3/22/15, Wall Street Journal (Online), U.S. Looks to Work With
China-Led Infrastructure Fund; Obama administration proposes co-financing
projects with new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Proquest database,
JMP)
WASHINGTON--The Obama administration, facing defiance by allies that have
signed up to support a new Chinese-led infrastructure fund, is proposing that
the bank work in a partnership with Washington-backed development
institutions, such as the World Bank.
The collaborative approach is designed to steer the new bank toward
economic aims of the world's leading economies and away from becoming an
instrument of Beijing's foreign policy. The bank's potential to promote new
alliances and sidestep existing institutions has been one of the Obama
administration's chief concerns as key allies including the U.K., Germany and

France lined up in recent days to become founding members of the new Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The Obama administration wants to use existing development banks to cofinance projects with Beijing's new organization. Indirect support would help
the U.S. address another long-standing goal: ensuring the new institution's
standards are designed to prevent unhealthy debt buildups, human-rights
abuses and environmental risks. U.S. support could also pave the way for
American companies to bid on the new bank's projects.
"The U.S. would welcome new multilateral institutions that strengthen the
international financial architecture," said Nathan Sheets, U.S. Treasury Under
Secretary for International Affairs. "Co-financing projects with existing
institutions like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank will help
ensure that high quality, time-tested standards are maintained."
Mr. Sheets argues that co-financed projects would ensure the bank
complements rather than competes with existing institutions. If the new bank
were to adopt the same governance and operational standards, he said, it
could both bolster the international financial system and help meet major
infrastructure-investment gaps.
No decision has been made by the new Chinese-led bank about whether it
will partner with existing multilateral development banks, as the facility is still
being formed, though co-financing is unlikely to face opposition from U.S.
allies.
Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman at China's embassy in Washington, said Beijing is
open to collaboration with the existing institutions and that the new bank "is
built in the spirit of openness and inclusiveness and will follow high
standards.
"It will effectively cooperate with and complement the existing multilateral
development banks such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank
to provide investment and financing for the infrastructure building in Asia,"
he said.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said through a spokesman that he and his
lieutenants are already in "deep discussions" with the new Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank "on how we can closely work together."
The U.S. suffered a diplomatic embarrassment last week after several of its
key European allies publicly rebuffed Washington's pleas to snub Beijing's
invitations to join the bank and instead said they would be founding
members.
Backing the new bank through co-financing could also help the U.S. move
past the diplomatic mess , reunite with its trans-Atlantic allies on this issue

and counter any perceptions that the U.S. is wholly opposed to the institution
as part of a China-containment strategy .
"Our concern has always been...will it adhere to the kinds of high standards
that the international financial institutions have developed?" U.S. Treasury
Secretary Jacob Lew told U.S. lawmakers last week.
Co-financing, combined with European membership, "will make it more likely
this institution largely conforms to the international standards," said Matthew
Goodman, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies adviser and former economics director at the U.S. National Security
Council.
The World Bank, forged out of World War II, remains the leading international
development institution with 188 nations as members. But others have
emerged amid concerns about drawing more investment and attention to
fast-growing regions. Those include the Asian Development Bank, the African
Development Bank, European Investment Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank.
The banks' loans are designed to foster infrastructure and development
projects that are often high-risk and long-term, helping to lower the costs for
governments that couldn't afford borrowing from the private sector. For the
most powerful lending countries, they cultivate regional growth prospects and
can provide a political tool for influencing smaller countries.
Beijing has struggled to increase its influence within the World Bank, the
Asian Development Bank and the world's emergency lender, the International
Monetary Fund. But as the founder and one of the new bank's largest
shareholders, it will have the greatest say in which projects to pick.
Infrastructure needs around the world are enormous. Emerging countries
need new ports, railways, bridges, airports and roads to support faster
growth. Developed economies, meanwhile, must replace aging infrastructure.
The Asian Development Bank estimates its region alone faces an annual
financing shortfall of $800 billion a year. The consulting firm McKinsey &
Company estimates global infrastructure-investment needs through 2030
total $57 trillion.
By comparison, the Asian Development Bank has just $160 billion in capital
and the World Bank-which has co-financed with other regional institutions for
years--has around $500 billion. The China-led bank plans to have a $50 billion
fund to start.
"We have every intention of sharing knowledge and co-investing in projects
throughout Asia," said Mr. Kim, who was picked by President Barack Obama
in 2012 as the U.S. nominee to lead the World Bank.

"From the perspective simply of the need for more infrastructure spending,
there's no doubt that we welcome the entry of the A sian Infrastructure
Investment Bank," Mr. Kim said.

U.S. adopting gradual openness towards the AIIB --solves relations and bank will have high standards
Panda, 9/28/15 --- editor at The Diplomat (Ankit, Have the US and China
Come to an Understanding on the AIIB? The United States and China have
come to a working understanding on the role of the AIIB. Washington can
move on now, http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/have-the-us-and-china-cometo-an-understanding-on-the-aiib/, article downloaded 4/24/16, JMP)
Has Washington made its peace with Chinas Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB) at last?
An official fact sheet on U.S.-China economic relations, issued after Chinese
President Xi Jinpings meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama at the
White House notes that the United States welcomes Chinas growing
contributions to financing development and infrastructure in Asia and
beyond. The introduction to the fact sheet also noted that the international
financial architecture has evolved over time to meet the changing scale,
scope, and diversity of challenges and to include new institutions as they
incorporate its core principles of high standards and good governance.
Though the AIIB wasnt mentioned explicitly in the statement, the
introductory language suggests that Washington is easing its tone on the new
China-led financial institution which launched earlier this year with a founding
membership comprising over 50 countries, including several Western
European states and U.S. partners and allies. The fact sheet notes that both
countries resolve to further strengthen the World Bank, Asian Development
Bank, African Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank by
enhancing their financial capacity, reforming their governance, and improving
their effectiveness and efficiency. The AIIB is notably excluded from this list.
The Financial Times reported on the shifting U.S. position on the AIIB in the
wake of Xis visit as well, noting that the U.S. officials had declared what
amounts to a truce in their campaign over Chinas new A sian infrastructure
bank. Per the FTs report, U.S. officials have noted that Xi gave his
assurances that the AIIB would abide by the highest international
environmental and governance standards . U.S. officials cited concerns about
the AIIBs governance standards as one of their primary concerns when its
allies started joining the institution. When the UK joined, for example, the
White House issued a statement noting that We hope and expect that the UK
will use its voice to push for adoption of high standards.

The AIIB his its deadline for prospective founding members on March 31,
2015. A framework agreement for the banks operations was signed on June
29, bringing some much-needed clarity on how the AIIB would manage
capital and voting rights. The bank launched with 57 countries, comprising a
quarter of the worlds nations and 16 of the worlds 20 largest economies.
The United States, along with Japan, represent two notable economies that
chose not to join the AIIB. The AIIBs appealing doesnt appear to be waning
anytime soon too. Up to 20 countries are still waiting for their opportunity to
join the AIIB, demonstrating that the institutions appeal is far from having
achieved global saturation with its inaugural founding members.
That Washington is coming around to the AIIB and softening its position on
the institution is a good thing. With a bevy of pressing challenges in the U.S.China relations, including cyber espionage, freedom of navigation in the East
and South China Seas, and growing military competition, the United States is
better off expending less diplomatic capital on opposition to institutions like
the AIIBwhich could ultimately serve as a net positive for a region where
infrastructure financing is very much neededand focusing its efforts on other
issues.
If youre looking for a more general look at the outcomes of Xis state visit,
Shannon Tiezzi has a helpful compilation of the other issues discussed here.

US softening resistance based off improved Chinese

lending standards.
Lim, 15 (Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim is a research fellow with the Longus Institute
for Development and Strategy, and is the author of Cambodia and the Politics
of Aesthetic, Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa,
and has taught at Pannasastra University of Cambodia and the American
University of Nigeria, The US, China And The AIIB: From Zero-Sum
Competition To Win-Win Cooperation? Analysis,
http://www.eurasiareview.com/19042015-the-us-china-and-the-aiib-from-zerosum-competition-to-win-win-cooperation-analysis/, CMR)
While the opportunity for countries to join the AIIB as founding members has closed, the bank is still open
to receiving ordinary members. Unlike the founding members who enjoy the right to create the AIIBs
governance and operational rules, the ordinary members have voting rights but are excluded from the
rule-making process.51 Of the G-7, the US, Canada and Japan missed out on the opportunity to participate
in the AIIB as founding members. Japan reportedly has interest in joining the AIIB as an ordinary member,
with a possible contribution of 1.5 billion USD.52 Likewise, Canada is actively considering joining the
AIIB.53 Following the unexpected surge in international support for the AIIB, including support from the

the US has softened its initial hostility to the AIIB. US

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has stated that the US is now open to welcoming
the AIIB if it, as China has repeatedly confirmed, complements the work of the existing
IFIs and follows world-class standards of governance .54 China, in turn, continues to
ADB, IMF, and World Bank,

offer the US the opportunity to join the AIIB. Jin Liqun and Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei have stated
that the US is welcome to join the AIIB anytime.55

U.S. will eventually join the AIIB

Obe, 1/18/16 (Mitsuro, Dow Jones Newswires Chinese (English), U.S.
Should Join China Infrastructure Bank, Former Envoy to ADB Says, Factiva,
JMP) ***Note --- Robert Orr is former U.S. ambassador to the ADB
Both Japan and the U.S. opted to stay out of the AIIB, voicing concern about
its governance structure. Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso emphasized
Friday that "there is no change" to Japan's position.
Many key U.S. allies, including Britain, France and Australia, joined the AIIB, to
the embarrassment of Washington.
Mr. Orr, who was brought in to the Manila-based ADB by the Obama
administration in 2010, said the U.S. will probably join the AIIB "at some
point."
"The best thing we can do is to figure out how to manage this thing, how we
work with these guys, how we point them in a direction that is consistent with
our interests," he said.
But he said that "it is absolutely necessary that any kind of action taken with
the AIIB will have to be undertaken in coordination with the government of
Japan."

U.S. working to integrate China into global economic

planning --- co-financing will pave the way for eventual
U.S. membership in AIIB
Talley, 15 (3/22/15, Wall Street Journal (Online), U.S. Looks to Work With
China-Led Infrastructure Fund; Obama administration proposes co-financing
projects with new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Proquest database,
JMP)
But while wary of China, Washington has at the same time been trying to pull
the country into the global political and economic architecture based on the
theory that Beijing's participation cultivates greater responsibility. Cofinancing could become a steppingstone for the U.S. to join in a few years.
That's why economists such as Fred Bergsten, a senior fellow at the Peterson
Institute and a former senior U.S. Treasury official, pushed for the U.S. to join
the China-led bank.
"If this does meet high standards, then that would be a good thing and we'd
take a look at it," the senior administration official said. "But we're still a few
steps away from that."

IMF reform was recently approved by Congress --- helps

integrate China into international economic system and
revives U.S. leadership
Frankel, 4/13/16 --- professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government
(Jeffrey, The Domestic Threat to US Leadership, https://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/obama-imf-reform-global-leadership-by-jeffreyfrankel-2016-04, article downloaded 6/5/16, JMP)
CAMBRIDGE US President Barack Obama has racked up a series of foreignpolicy triumphs over the last 12 months . But one that has gained less
attention than others was the passage last December of legislation to reform
the International Monetary Fund, after five years of obstruction by the US
Congress. As the IMF convenes in Washington, DC, for its annual spring
meetings on April 15-17, we should pause to savor the importance of this
achievement. After all, if the United States had let yet another year go by
without ratifying the IMF quota reform, it would have essentially handed over
the keys of global economic leadership to China .
The IMF reform was crucial: The allocation of monetary contributions and
voting power among member countries had to be updated to reflect the shifts
in global economic power in recent decades. Specifically, emerging-market
economies like Brazil, China, and India gained a larger role, primarily at the
expense of European and Persian Gulf countries.
Obama managed to persuade the leaders of the other G-20 countries to
agree to the reform at a 2010 summit in Seoul. The deals subsequent
approval should have been a no-brainer for Congress, as it neither increased
Americas financial obligations nor took away its voting dominance. More
important, the reform represented a golden opportunity for the US to
demonstrate global leadership , by recognizing that the existing international
order must accommodate changing economic-power dynamics.
Instead, Congress attempted to block IMF reform, effectively denying China
its rightful place at the table of global governance. Moving the goal posts
could succeed only in driving the Chinese to establish their own institutions.
In this sense, Congressional intransigence may have undermined Americas
position in its competition with China for global power and influence.
To most Asians, the US is a more attractive regional hegemon than a China
that has been aggressively pursuing territorial claims in the East and South
China Seas. But recent US behavior has caused some Asian countries to
begin to question Americas commitment to supporting regional security and
prosperity.
Against this background, many countries, both inside and outside Asia, were
happy to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which
promised to meet some of the regions financing needs. The AIIBs

establishment in December was widely viewed as a severe diplomatic

setback for the US.
Fortunately, thanks to Obamas recent string of successes in terms of global
engagement, the US now has a chance to get back into the game. Last April,
his administration oversaw a breakthrough agreement with Iran over its
nuclear program. Moreover, in October, Congress was persuaded to give it
Trade Promotion Authority, enabling the completion of the 12-country TransPacific Partnership (TPP). More recently, the US has reestablished diplomatic
relations with Cuba, ending a 55-year policy of isolation that succeeded only
in giving Cubas leaders an excuse for economic failure and handicapping
Americas relationships throughout Latin America.
Finally, representatives of the 195 parties to the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change reached an agreement in Paris last December to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions, spurred in no small part by earlier action by
Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are scheduled to
sign the Paris agreement on April 22 on behalf of their respective countries,
the worlds two largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Add to that the
ratification, at long last, of IMF reform, and the US does seem to be on a
global winning streak.
None of these five achievements could have been predicted a year ago. With
the Republicans having taken full control of the Congress in November 2014,
the overwhelming conventional wisdom was that the administration would be
blocked from accomplishing much in its final two years.
Making matters worse, internationalism attracts opposition from the far left
as well as the far right. Though trade is the most obvious example, it is not
the only one. Beyond opposing the TPP, US presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders has historically joined with congressional Republicans in trying to
block efforts to rescue emerging-market countries in Latin America and Asia
at times of financial crisis. These rescues are invariably called bailouts,
even when they cost the US nothing the US Treasury actually made a profit
on the 1995 loan to Mexico that Sanders opposed and help sustain
economic growth. Similarly, New York Senator Chuck Schumer joined the
Republicans in trying to block the Iran nuclear agreement.
Obamas recent international successes are not unassailable. Although the
IMF deal is done, Obamas other key initiatives could still be derailed by US
politics, especially if the political extremes unite. Congress could reject the
TPP, in effect telling Asia it is on its own. It could undermine the emerging
relationship with Cuba; after all, it has yet to repeal the embargo. As for the
Paris agreement, a federal appeals court will first hear a challenge to the
administrations implementation strategy, the Clean Power Plan, on June 2.
The Republican presidential campaign adds another element of uncertainty.
The two leading candidates for the partys nomination, Donald Trump and Ted
Cruz, both say that they would tear up the Iran nuclear deal, if elected. It is

worth recalling the outcome of President George W. Bushs analogous

decision to tear up Bill Clintons framework agreement with North Korea:
the Kim regime promptly and predictably developed a nuclear bomb.
Whether the US will continue to lead the world remains unclear. What is clear
is that US politics, not global developments, will be the main determinant.

Solves the case --- sends positive signal to China that

improves relations and minimizes future diplomatic
clashes
Boston Globe, 3/26/15 (The Editorial Board, US should integrate China
into existing institutions,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/03/26/should-integratechina-into-existing-institutions/OhuJ0Oa4HGndoaxPdNOb6L/story.html, article
downloaded on 6/4/16, JMP)
When most of the nations closest allies are deserting the United States on a
matter of global economic importance, US politicians of both parties should
listen to the underlying message.
Earlier this month, the British government defied the United States and
announced it will join a new international development bank created and led
by China. Germany, France, and Italy followed within days. And as the initial
enrollment deadline for the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
approaches at the end of the month, Australia and South Korea are poised to
sign up as well. Without doubt, the new bank exemplifies Chinas efforts to
elbow its way into a global financial system long dominated by the United
States, and to convert its economic muscle into diplomatic strength around
the world.
But with its growing GDP and vast financial reserves, China is bound to claim
a larger role in one way or another. The United States should seek to
accommodate that shift in a productive way, by enmeshing the worlds
second-largest economy more deeply in multilateral bodies such as the World
Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank three
institutions over which the United States has long exercised outsize
influence. Instead, Republicans in Congress have stalled even modest reforms
that would give China and other major emerging economies more influence
over the IMF.
The new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to be headquartered in
Shanghai, is plainly a rival to older global financial institutions. While the USled institutions have made a show of tying aid to transparency and political
reforms, China has gained a reputation globally for giving money to
repressive governments without strings attached. The European powers

joining Beijings bank argue that they can best promote good governance for
the institution by working inside it.
Still, its obvious that Britain, Germany, and others are eager to get into a
rising powers good graces. The Obama administration lobbied US allies not
to join, while passive-aggressively insisting that the United States is worried
only about the new banks governance and not about any potential blow to
American prestige. In doing so, the administration unnecessarily turned the
issue into a US-China diplomatic battle which the United States has now
lost.
All multilateral deals trade treaties, international development banks,
security arrangements require sacrifices from all parties. Yet the end of the
Cold War encouraged Americans of all ideological stripes to believe, for a
generation, that the United States can and should dictate the terms of
international relations. For the GOP leadership, delaying reforms at the IMF is
a convenient way to inflict more political pain on Obama. For the Tea Party
right, insisting upon the American way of doing everything is a matter of
conviction. But Washingtons inability to settle even straightforward matters
is undermining the nations ability to exercise leadership in the world.
Making some room for China on the global scene wouldnt just be a
magnanimous gesture by the United States. It will also help avoid future
diplomatic fiascoes. The more China is integrated into existing institutions,
the less the imperative to start its own.

Co-financing solves
Obama softening U.S. stance to AIIB --- co-financing will
reverse perception of containment and resolve diplomatic
debacle
Talley, 15 (3/22/15, Wall Street Journal (Online), U.S. Looks to Work With
China-Led Infrastructure Fund; Obama administration proposes co-financing
projects with new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Proquest database,
JMP)
WASHINGTON--The Obama administration, facing defiance by allies that have
signed up to support a new Chinese-led infrastructure fund, is proposing that
the bank work in a partnership with Washington-backed development
institutions, such as the World Bank.
The collaborative approach is designed to steer the new bank toward
economic aims of the world's leading economies and away from becoming an
instrument of Beijing's foreign policy. The bank's potential to promote new
alliances and sidestep existing institutions has been one of the Obama
administration's chief concerns as key allies including the U.K., Germany and
France lined up in recent days to become founding members of the new Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The Obama administration wants to use existing development banks to cofinance projects with Beijing's new organization. Indirect support would help
the U.S. address another long-standing goal: ensuring the new institution's
standards are designed to prevent unhealthy debt buildups, human-rights
abuses and environmental risks. U.S. support could also pave the way for
American companies to bid on the new bank's projects.
"The U.S. would welcome new multilateral institutions that strengthen the
international financial architecture," said Nathan Sheets, U.S. Treasury Under
Secretary for International Affairs. "Co-financing projects with existing
institutions like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank will help
ensure that high quality, time-tested standards are maintained."
Mr. Sheets argues that co-financed projects would ensure the bank
complements rather than competes with existing institutions. If the new bank
were to adopt the same governance and operational standards, he said, it
could both bolster the international financial system and help meet major
infrastructure-investment gaps.
No decision has been made by the new Chinese-led bank about whether it
will partner with existing multilateral development banks, as the facility is still
being formed, though co-financing is unlikely to face opposition from U.S.
allies.

Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman at China's embassy in Washington, said Beijing is

open to collaboration with the existing institutions and that the new bank "is
built in the spirit of openness and inclusiveness and will follow high
standards.
"It will effectively cooperate with and complement the existing multilateral
development banks such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank
to provide investment and financing for the infrastructure building in Asia,"
he said.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said through a spokesman that he and his
lieutenants are already in "deep discussions" with the new Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank "on how we can closely work together."
The U.S. suffered a diplomatic embarrassment last week after several of its
key European allies publicly rebuffed Washington's pleas to snub Beijing's
invitations to join the bank and instead said they would be founding
members.
Backing the new bank through co-financing could also help the U.S. move
past the diplomatic mess , reunite with its trans-Atlantic allies on this issue
and counter any perceptions that the U.S. is wholly opposed to the institution
as part of a China-containment strategy .
"Our concern has always been...will it adhere to the kinds of high standards
that the international financial institutions have developed?" U.S. Treasury
Secretary Jacob Lew told U.S. lawmakers last week.
Co-financing, combined with European membership, "will make it more likely
this institution largely conforms to the international standards," said Matthew
Goodman, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies adviser and former economics director at the U.S. National Security
Council.
The World Bank, forged out of World War II, remains the leading international
development institution with 188 nations as members. But others have
emerged amid concerns about drawing more investment and attention to
fast-growing regions. Those include the Asian Development Bank, the African
Development Bank, European Investment Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank.
The banks' loans are designed to foster infrastructure and development
projects that are often high-risk and long-term, helping to lower the costs for
governments that couldn't afford borrowing from the private sector. For the
most powerful lending countries, they cultivate regional growth prospects and
can provide a political tool for influencing smaller countries.
Beijing has struggled to increase its influence within the World Bank, the
Asian Development Bank and the world's emergency lender, the International

Monetary Fund. But as the founder and one of the new bank's largest
shareholders, it will have the greatest say in which projects to pick.
Infrastructure needs around the world are enormous. Emerging countries
need new ports, railways, bridges, airports and roads to support faster
growth. Developed economies, meanwhile, must replace aging infrastructure.
The Asian Development Bank estimates its region alone faces an annual
financing shortfall of $800 billion a year. The consulting firm McKinsey &
Company estimates global infrastructure-investment needs through 2030
total $57 trillion.
By comparison, the Asian Development Bank has just $160 billion in capital
and the World Bank-which has co-financed with other regional institutions for
years--has around $500 billion. The China-led bank plans to have a $50 billion
fund to start.
"We have every intention of sharing knowledge and co-investing in projects
throughout Asia," said Mr. Kim, who was picked by President Barack Obama
in 2012 as the U.S. nominee to lead the World Bank.
"From the perspective simply of the need for more infrastructure spending,
there's no doubt that we welcome the entry of the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank," Mr. Kim said.

Moves towards co-financing well underway solves

cooperation
Wu, 4/15/16 (Wendy, AIIB and World Bank reach deal on joint projects, as
China-led lender prepares to approve US$1.2 billion of funds this year,
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1935932/aiiband-world-bank-reach-deal-joint-projects-china-led, CMR)
The Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the US-dominated
World Bank originally seen as rivals have signed an agreement to cofinance projects. As part of the deal signed on Thursday which comes as the AIIB prepares to
announce its first batch of loans the two banks are discussing nearly a dozen jointly
financed projects in sectors including transport, water and energy in Central Asia, South Asia, and
East Asia. The AIIB is expected to begin lending from the second quarter of this year, after its high-profile
inauguration in January. Chinas Asian neighbours, such as Pakistan, are expected to benefit. The two
banks said the AIIB expected to approve US$1.2 billion in funds for development projects this year, with a
sizeable share expected to go on joint projects with the World Bank. Taiwan says it will not join Beijing-led
AIIB after rejecting condition that violates dignity Jin Liqun ( ), president of the AIIB, said the bank
was cooperating with both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in approving the first

a huge amount of chemistry has already

been nurtured between the AIIB and the World Bank, the AIIB and the ADB ,
batch of co-financed projects in June. I would say

Xinhua quoted him as saying at an event hosted by the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington
yesterday. The Beijing-led infrastructure bank has 57 members, but some major developed nations,
including the United States and Japan, have not joined. Its establishment was seen as an attempt by
Beijing to rival the World Bank and the ADB, which is presided over by Japan. Critics have expressed
concerns over whether the operation of the AIIB is transparent and up to international standards. Jim Yong
Kim, president of the World Bank, said the joint agreement was an important first step towards working
with a new partner to address the worlds huge infrastructure needs. The World Bank said it would
prepare and supervise the co-financed projects in accordance with its policies in areas such as

Yin, an associate professor with the

University of I nternational R elations in Beijing, said the banks cooperation was a
move to dispel doubts over the AIIB. China has strong competence in infrastructure
procurement, environment and social safeguards. Chu

construction and is rich in capital, he said. But it lacks the ability to manage the funds and is short of
experience in communicating with foreign governments to process the projects. Therefore, it needs to
leverage others strengths. AIIB chief wants Hong Kong to raise and manage funds for lender Paul Haenle,

the agreement showed that the

AIIB wanted to be part of the global financing system, rather than create a
new one. What Jin wants to do is to make sure the AIIB becomes a part of the
existing structure of multinational development banks , he said. But I think there is a
director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, said

financial aspect too. [The two banks] cannot fund everything by themselves. They both need partners,
[and are] looking to private partnerships and also other multinational banks, too. The AIIB plans to hold a
board meeting at the end of this month to discuss procedures for new members. Canadian officials have
said they are looking closely at joining. Last month, asked about the possible entry of the US and Japan,
Jin said we are very patient and added that the bank was open and inclusive.

Co-financing and collaboration will solve --- helps ensure

China will be a responsible stakeholder
Dr. Kawai, 15 --- Professor at the University of Tokyos Graduate School of
Public Policy (last modified on 8/7/2015, Masahiro Kawai, ASIAN
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE
STAKEHOLDER?, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Evolving
International Financial Order, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
The skeptical view sees Chinas potential to use AIIB as an instrument for:
undermining existing MDBs particularly the World Bank and ADB by
adopting low standards in running the bank; alleviating its own economic
problems of excess capacity, slow growth, and energy and resource
insecurity; and expanding its geopolitical sphere of influence in Asia through
the One Belt, One Road initiative.
From this perspective, it would be prudent for Japan (and, for that matter, the
United States) to judge if AIIB will serve as a productive bank that facilitates
the provision of international public goods, or as a bank that mainly serves
Chinas economic and geopolitical interests. Japan, together with the United
States, needs to see if AIIB will be run as a financially sound bank, whose
operations include adequate environmental and social safeguards.
Given the lessons from IDBs collaboration with CAF and other sub-regional
MDBs in Latin America, encouraging the World Bank and ADB to work with
AIIB is the right course. It is in the best interest of the international
community to pull China and AIIB into the existing international financial
order and help make China a responsible international stakeholder.

U.S. is willing to work with the AIIB --- co-financing will

solve
Fackler, 15 (3/31/15, Martin, New York Times (Online), Japan, Sticking With
U.S., Says It Won't Join China-Led Bank, Proquest database, JMP)
In a speech in San Francisco on Tuesday, the American Treasury secretary,
Jacob J. Lew, said that the United States was willing to work with an
institution like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, so long as it was
accompanied by high governance standards and worked alongside existing
international organizations.
"I was encouraged by my conversations in Beijing in which China's leaders
made clear that they aspire to meet high standards and welcome
partnership," he said.
He added that "having the A.I.I.B. cofinance projects with existing institutions
will help demonstrate a commitment to the highest standards of governance,
environmental and social safeguards, and debt sustainability."

ADB & AIIB cooperating now for sustainable growth

M2 Presswire, 5/2/16 (ADB, AIIB Sign MOU To Strengthen Cooperation
for Sustainable Growth, Proquest database, JMP)
FRANKFURT, GERMANY - Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Takehiko
Nakao and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) President Liqun Jin
signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) here today on the sidelines of
ADB's 49th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors.
The agreement sets the stage for jointly financing projects. ADB and AIIB are
already discussing projects for cofinancing in the road and water sectors. The
first of these projects is expected to be Pakistan's M4 highway project, a 64kilometer stretch of motorway connecting Shorkot to Khanewal in Punjab
Province.
ADB and AIIB agreed to strengthen cooperation, including cofinancing, at the
strategic and technical levels on the basis of complementarity, value added,
institutional strengths and comparative advantages, and mutual benefit, the
MOU states.
"I am very pleased to have this framework of collaboration with a new and
strong partner in Asia," said Mr. Nakao. "ADB has been working closely with
AIIB throughout its establishment process. We will further strengthen our
cooperation in promoting sustainable growth, reducing poverty, and
combatting climate change in the region."
"I am delighted to take a further step forward in our partnership with ADB,"
Mr. Jin said. "AIIB looks forward to deepening our already strong relationship

and expanding our collaboration as we seek to address the significant

infrastructure financing needs in the Asia region."
Through cofinancing, knowledge work, and joint policy dialogue with member
countries, the two institutions will work together in the areas including
energy, transportation, telecommunications, rural and agriculture
development, water, urban development, and environmental protection.
The two institutions will undertake regular high-level consultations and joint
data collection to promote the implementation of the Sustainable
Development Goals and the COP21 climate agreement.
ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific
through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and
regional integration. Established in 1966, ADB in December 2016 will mark 50
years of development partnership in the region. It is owned by 67 members48 from the region. In 2015, ADB assistance totaled $27.2 billion, including
cofinancing of $10.7 billion.
AIIB, located in Beijing, is a multilateral development bank that focuses on
the development of infrastructure and other productive sectors in Asia,
including energy and power, transportation and telecommunications, rural
infrastructure and agriculture development, water supply and sanitation,
environmental protection, urban development and logistics.

U.S. will eventually join the AIIB

Obe, 1/18/16 (Mitsuro, Dow Jones Newswires Chinese (English), U.S.
Should Join China Infrastructure Bank, Former Envoy to ADB Says, Factiva,
JMP) ***Note --- Robert Orr is former U.S. ambassador to the ADB
Both Japan and the U.S. opted to stay out of the AIIB, voicing concern about
its governance structure. Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso emphasized
Friday that "there is no change" to Japan's position.
Many key U.S. allies, including Britain, France and Australia, joined the AIIB, to
the embarrassment of Washington.
Mr. Orr, who was brought in to the Manila-based ADB by the Obama
administration in 2010, said the U.S. will probably join the AIIB "at some
point."
"The best thing we can do is to figure out how to manage this thing, how we
work with these guys, how we point them in a direction that is consistent with
our interests," he said.
But he said that "it is absolutely necessary that any kind of action taken with
the AIIB will have to be undertaken in coordination with the government of
Japan."

U.S. working to integrate China into global economic

planning --- co-financing will pave the way for eventual
U.S. membership in AIIB
Talley, 15 (3/22/15, Wall Street Journal (Online), U.S. Looks to Work With
China-Led Infrastructure Fund; Obama administration proposes co-financing
projects with new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Proquest database,
JMP)
But while wary of China, Washington has at the same time been trying to pull
the country into the global political and economic architecture based on the
theory that Beijing's participation cultivates greater responsibility. Cofinancing could become a steppingstone for the U.S. to join in a few years.
That's why economists such as Fred Bergsten, a senior fellow at the Peterson
Institute and a former senior U.S. Treasury official, pushed for the U.S. to join
the China-led bank.
"If this does meet high standards, then that would be a good thing and we'd
take a look at it," the senior administration official said. "But we're still a few
steps away from that."

No uq
Relations resilient --- they empirically endure crises
Chen, 16 --- Director of the US Center of the China Foundation for
International Studies (1/12/16, Yonglong, Head Tides Wont Set Back SinoU.S. Ties, http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/head-tides-wont-setback-sino-u-s-ties/, article downloaded 6/6/16, JMP)
In their respective reviews of Sino-US relations at the end of the year, various
institutions, governments, think tanks, mass media and individual observers,
particularly in China and the United States, have divergent judgments about
the state of those relations based on different intentions, perspectives and
criteria. Among those sometimes conflicting observations, however, there is
also one underlying consensus: Despite all the contradictions, entanglements
and escalation in tensions, the great ship of Sino-US relations has always
managed to plow through the waves .
Nowadays, more and more people are concerned about the China-US
relationship, and to greater extents. With the exception of an extremely small
number of countries, the boundary line between pro- and anti-China camps is
getting increasingly blurred. The birth of the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank was a typical case in point. It was expected that many developing
countries would participate actively. But the US might have never anticipated
that its traditional allies Britain, France, Germany, Australia and South Korea
would become the first founding members of the AIIB, and that it could have
failed to prevent those countries from taking part in a China-initiated public
goods program for their own benefits. Their participation in the AIIB doesnt
mean they now shun America; they remain, for example, key members of
such traditional institutions as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund,
and the Asian Development Bank. It only means that they no longer endorse
the clear China-or-US demarcation as in the past. They cant afford to just
listen to the US only on Sino-US relations, not to mention that US stance
regarding the AIIB has been widely criticized at home. The warming up of
China-Britain, China-France, and China-Germany ties after President Xi
Jinpings US visit was telling proof.
Those countries care about the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
But they also have shown great interest in the One Belt, One Road initiative
China has proposed. Sure, the TPP is a magnificent trade mechanism some
countries have conceived in the name of further promoting free trade, which
may present benchmark criteria for future world trade. Any country aspiring
to join the club must first satisfy those criteria. The TPP is obviously more
political, less inclusive. The One Belt, One Road initiative is quite different:
Starting with infrastructure construction, China and stake-holding countries
are supposed to undertake projects they plan, build and share together. It
conforms to the national conditions and needs of all participating countries, is
pragmatic and inclusive, and makes it easier for host countries to see the

practical benefits of the projects, and for other participants to receive moral
and economic returns.
Debate on Sino-US relations is expected to continue. But a new type of stateto-state relationship has to be built. By and large, there have been three main
ideas in the extensive debate over Sino-US ties since the beginning of 2015:
One holds that post-Nixon US China policies have failed completely, and
China is becoming, or has already become, a rivalry, and a strategic one, to
the US. Typical statements include that China and the US are in a time of
mutual distrust, and that the US needs to revise its grand China strategy,
featuring the belief that China is challenging American global leadership, and
the US must take tougher containment policies. The second proposes to
maintain the policy of engagement, competition, regulation and cooperation,
seek to establish security and economic cooperation mechanisms in the AsiaPacific, and to not let the South China Sea issue become a flashpoint for a
Sino-US new cold war or confrontation. The third advocates all-round
cooperation, stating that both China and the US should have sufficient
strategic patience, and seek points of cooperation based on common
interests.
The first point of view is evidently extremist, but very influential and
misleading. The second reflects majority opinion in the US, while the third
sounds more or less idealistic. Though there has yet to be a similar major
debate in China, and cooperation remains the main theme regarding Sino-US
ties, radical opinions such as claims of Sino-US mutual suspicion, US
containment of China, and the assumption that a war is inevitable between
China and the US, have also been heard from time to time.
Leaders of both China and the US have taken the challenges to lead public
opinion, create and take advantage of opportunities, explore ways for
building a new type of major-country relationship, and sail against the
current. After conclusion of the agreement on the Iran nuclear issue,
President Obama called President Xi and praised Chinas constructive role
throughout the process. Before and after countries reached an agreement at
the Paris climate summit, Obama called Xi, giving full credit to US-China
leadership in facilitating the agreement. Xis US visit was fruitful in that it
guaranteed the correct direction of building a new-type Sino-US majorcountry relationship; Obama also told Xi that he would leave a stable USChina relationship to the next administration. Bit by bit, both governments
have been accumulating mutual confidence through practical moves and
projects of collaboration.
A consensus is taking shape among celebrities, ordinary citizens, leaders and
strategists in both countries that in spite of all the changes in global and
international conditions, China and the US should not change their course of
engagement and cooperation. In the current age of globalization and
interconnection, with global and regional challenges like wars, terrorist
attacks, natural disasters and slow economic recovery emerging and

increasing all the time, no country can stay immune and cope with the
threats single-handedly. There is little dispute that few global challenges can
be handled properly without the joint participation and effective cooperation
of China and the US. From the global perspective, historic changes are taking
place in the connotations of relations between rising and incumbent powers.
People from China, the US and the rest of the world share the hope that the
two countries adapt to each other, leave room for each other, manage and
control their disagreements, and work harder to seek collaboration. That is
the only way for China, the US, and the rest of the world to see a promising
future. Are China and the US ready? Instead of forming a group of two,
China and the US share the responsibility to pursue the common goal of
building a global community of shared destiny.

AIIB wont produce strategic rivalry, regardless of US

membership narrow goals, uncertainty, external actors
and competition is net-positive for global coop.
Chen, 15 (Dingding, an assistant professor of Government and Public
Administration at the University of Macau, Non-Resident Fellow at the Global
Public Policy Institute (GPPi) Berlin, Germany, AIIB: Not a US Loss, Not a
Chinese Win, http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/aiib-not-a-us-loss-not-achinese-win/, CMR)
Too much ink has been spilled over Chinas seeming success in wooing away the United States traditional
allies to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Many analysts (here, here, and here)
see it as a China winning, U.S. losing story, thereby implicitly highlighting the confrontational nature of
Sino-U.S. relations. Such a view is not only too simplistic, but also dangerous for moving Sino-U.S. relations
forward. While to some degree it is true that China has scored a political victory by successfully attracting
some of Americas traditional allies to the AIIB, there are three things we need to consider before we
bandwagon with the clich that China is rising while the U.S. is declining. The first thing to bear in mind is

the AIIB is an economic institution that may or may not carry strategic
implications. While many might be tempted to view Chinas AIIB move as a
direct threat to the U.S.-led global financial order, in reality the AIIBs goals
are much more limited . It is very important for the U.S. not to view the AIIB as a
new signal of strategic rivalry between China and the U.S.; such a distorted
view would assign unnecessary strategic significance to the AIIB which is in
reality is first and foremost about development. It is about funding more roads,
railroads, airports, and pipelines for many developing countries in Asia. If the U.S. becomes
that

hypersensitive to Chinas every effort in global governance, then it is possible that the U.S. might reach
the wrong conclusion that China indeed is trying to overthrow U.S. hegemony and start taking

In actuality, China
cannot and will not challenge U.S. hegemony . Another thing that is worth
remembering, as many have already pointed out, is that the AIIBs future is still uncertain .
For one thing, it is the first time that Beijing has tried running a multilateral
economic institution. Some internal challenges will not be fixed easily, and
some external challenges are even harder to overcome . It is not clear how democratic
countermeasures to curb Chinas rising influence. That would be a tragedy.

and transparent the decision-making structure will be within the AIIB, especially now that many major
economies like Germany and the U.K. have decided to join the bank.

What is more likely is that

Beijings preferences will be constrained by such major players , which is not

necessarily a bad thing. The reason is that these more experienced players can help Beijing make better
decisions when allocating funds and thus ultimately improve the quality and reputation of the AIIB in the
future. More importantly, a more democratic structure in the AIIB will reduce the suspicions and worries of
smaller Asian countries that are already wary of Chinas future intentions. By delegating more power to
other players, Beijing can send a strong and reassuring signal to countries like Vietnam and the Philippines
thereby moderating tensions between these countries, stemming from maritime territorial disputes. Beijing
must make a serious effort to show that the AIIB is not just another weapon to help China dominate
Southeast Asia. Failing to do so would jeopardize not only the AIIBs goals but also Chinas project of a
peaceful rise. Finally,

it is misleading to claim that the U.S. is a loser in the AIIB

project. While it was unwise for the U.S. to prevent its allies from joining the AIIB earlier, it would be
equally unwise to underestimate the potential influence of the U.S. on the AIIB and development in Asia in
general. Whether or not the U.S. eventually joins the AIIB remains to be seen. If the U.S. does join the AIIB,

Even if the U.S. chooses to stay

outside of the AIIB in the future, competition between AIIB and the U.S.-led world
bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) will ensure that American standards and
will continue to dominate the global financial order in the foreseeable future .
then we could very well see a different structure for the bank.

Needless to say, the China-led AIIB poses some challenges to U.S. influence in Asia. It is imperative for

Healthy
competition between different global financial institutions is good for Asia and
the world as a whole. To that end, analysts should stop the China vs. the U.S. hype and pay more
leaders from both China and the United States to avoid falling into a confrontational trap.

attention to how the quality of the AIIB as an institution can be improved.

Relations are high and inevitable --- no risk of conflict

Chen 15 - PhD, Associate Research Fellow for the Institute for International
Strategic Studies at the Party School of Central Committee of C.P.C.
(Jimin, Risks Manageable for China-U.S. Relations, June,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/risks-manageable-for-china-u-srelations/)
On May 16 and 17, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid his fifth visit to China , becoming the
highest-level U.S. official to visit China so far this year. According to the information released by the U.S.

the main purpose of this trip was to advance U.S. priorities

ahead of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue this summer and the planned
visit to the United States of President Xi Jinping this fall. However, U.S. officials revealed that
Department of State,

Kerrys visit would put pressure on Chinas behavior, especially on the issue of South China Sea. For
example, U.S. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel said in prepared
testimony for a U.S. Senate hearing on May 13 that the United States was committed to maintaining
freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. During Kerrys visit to Beijing this weekend,
the United States would clearly demonstrate the determination to push for respect for the rules and push
back on unilateral actions to change the status quo. Moreover, both U.S. politics and academia are now
filled with a tough argument on China, which might plunge Sino-US relations into a crisis. For example, a
recent Wall Street Journal report, citing anonymous U.S. military officials, said the Pentagon was
considering sending Navy surveillance aircraft as well as ships within 12 nautical miles to reefs and islands
claimed by China in the South China Sea, taking practical actions to demonstrate the U.S. will and ability to
protect its advocated freedom of navigation. In addition, the U.S. think tanks have also published reports
on U.S. China policy. The Council on Foreign Relations in early March published one such report entitled
Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, which recommended that the United States needs to restore
a hard-line China policy, noting thatWashington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on

There are also

some people suggesting the emergence of two confrontation groups in the
region. Since the year of 2014, the U.S.-Japan alliance has strengthened in unprecedented ways. Not
balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

long ago, Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the United States, winning a high-profile reception. The
two sides revised The Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation, which promoted Japan to play a more
active security role on a global scale. It also advanced the US-Japan alliance up to a new stage, that is, the
United States continues to provide security guarantee for Japan, and Japan also provides more support to
U.S. security. Meanwhile, from May 8-10, President Xi Jinping attended the Victory Day Parade in Moscow
to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the worlds anti-fascist war and paid his fourth visit
to Russia since taking office. The two parties issued a joint statement to deepen the comprehensive
strategic partnership of coordination, which was the third one since the establishment of Chinas new
administration two years ago. In the joint statement, the two countries have emphasized mutually firm
support and assistance on issues concerning core interests such as the sovereignty, territorial integrity,
and national security. It gives the outside world an impression that China and Russia increasingly move

In reality , current China-U.S.

relations are hardly as bad as it might seem on the surface . Kerrys visit reflects that
Sino-US relationship is still on the right track , and the differences between
the countries are manageable . Kerrys visit to China shows that both sides
attach great importance to the relationship. Despite the contradictions and
differences , the will of the top leaders of both countries to develop bilateral
relations is strong and consistent . From Sunnylands in 2013 to Zhongnanhai in 2014, the
two heads of state have formed a high degree of consensus on this point .
Kerrys visit also indicates that high-level Sino-US communication channels are open and
effective. At present, the two countries have established more than 90 kinds of
communication mechanisms, including the important Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the
High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange. These channels provide the
foundation for managing disagreements and risks. In November 2014, the
two sides established two mutual-trust mechanisms, namely, Notification of
Major Military Activities [and] Confidence Building Measures Mechanism and
Rules of Behavior for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters . Such
mechanisms and rules are extremely helpful and beneficial for both sides to
reduce the chance of conflicts or confrontations .
toward alliance, or have formed a quasi-alliance relationship.

Relations are resilient---the last three decades prove they

can compete and cooperate at once
Russel 14 - Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
(Daniel, The Future of U.S.-China Relations, Testimony Before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Lexis)
Overall Bilateral Relations
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of official
diplomatic relations between the United States and China. We have made
remarkable progress since the era of back-channel messaging and secret trips. The scope of todays
U.S.-China relationship was unimaginable when President Nixon made his
historic visit in 1972 to China. Yet there is still enormous potential for progress in the U.S.-China relationship. Progress
that will yield benefits to the citizens of both countries, our neighbors, and the world. To realize this progress and these benefits, we seek to
ensure that the relationship is not defined by strategic rivalry, but by fair and healthy competition, by practical cooperation on priority issues,

constructive

disagreements

and by
management of our differences and
. Where interests overlap, we will seek to
expand cooperation with China. These areas include economic prosperity, a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, peaceful resolution of the Iranian
nuclear issue, and a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.

Where they diverge and we have

significant and well-known areas of disagreement we will work to ensure

that our differences are constructively managed . Mr. Chairman, there are those who
argue that cold war-like rivalry is inevitable and that the United States and
China are condemned to a zero-sum struggle for supremacy, if not conflict . I
reject such mechanistic thinking. As anyone who has served in government can tell you, this deterministic analysis
overlooks the role of leaders who have the ability to set policy and to shape
relationships. It gives short shrift to the fact that our two economies are
becoming increasingly intertwined, which increases each sides stake in the
success of the other. It undervalues the fact that leaders in Washington and
Beijing are fully cognizant of the risk of unintended strategic rivalry between
an emerging power and an established power and have agreed to take
deliberate actions to prevent such an outcome . And it ignores the reality of
the past 35 years that, in spite of our differences , U.S.-China relations have
steadily grown deeper and stronger and in doing so, we have built a very resilient
relationship.

This resilience will extend into the future---its in mutual

interest
Dingli 15 PhD, professor and Vice Dean at the Institute of International
Studies, Fudan University. He is also the founder and director of Chinas first
non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security at
Fudan University
(Shen, Maturing China-U.S. Ties to Breed Breakthroughs,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/maturing-china-u-s-ties-to-breedbreakthroughs/)
Such is the current China-US relationship. Contradictions accompany
development, development overcomes contradictions; competition stimulates
progress, progress facilitates equality. China-US relationship is such a
gradually maturing new type of relations. The two countries will find more
challenges in their face in the next few decades. But since they cant afford
the consequences of confrontation, dialogue and cooperation will be their
common choice . There will be more cooperation as both parties mature in
mindset.

No impact
No risk of escalation
Mirski, 15 --- third-year student Harvard Law School, Supreme Court Chair
Harvard Law Review (2/4/15, Sean, Crowded Waters: The South China
Sea's Next Big Flashpoint?, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/crowdedwaters-the-south-china-seas-next-big-flashpoint-12184?page=4)
The South China Sea ranks high on any list of the worlds geopolitical
hotspots. But though the region has been volatile for centuries, the last two
decades have witnessed a subtle shift in the underlying drivers of conflict.
Through most of the second half of the twentieth century, the biggest threats
to regional stability were claimant states angling to carve out their own slices
of the Sea. Today, states continue to covet islands controlled by their
neighbors, but none is willing to run a significant risk of war in order to
improve its position vis--vis the others.
Unfortunately, this good news has been offset by the rise of a different risk
factor. Propelled by a combination of waning marine resources and misguided
government policies, fishermen are sailing further from their shores and into
disputed areas. There, they are increasingly likely to bump prows with either
foreign competitors or antagonistic coast guards. The outcome in either case
could be disastrous.
Accordingly, Washington has fallen short in its most recent proposal asking
states to freeze the status quo. Rather than focusing their diplomatic
energies exclusively on the behavior of foreign navies, American policy
makers should recognize that the next crisis could inadvertently start in the
waters between a fishing trawler and a zealous coast-guard cutter.
Past Is Not Prologue
In the last century, states wrote the most important chapters in the South
China Sea saga. The script was tense and sometimes even sanguinary:
claimants raced to consolidate control over unoccupied islands, and in
extreme cases, they attempted to wrest dominion from owners caught offguard. These policies involved running a serious risk of outright conflict, but it
was a gamble that states were willing to take. Hostilities crested in 1988,
when Beijing and Hanoi battled over Johnson South Reef. China had trained
for the landing extensively, anticipating violence. It got what it expected:
after killing over seventy Vietnamese soldiers, China raised its flag over the
barren rock.
(Recommended: China's 50,000 Weapons in the South China Sea?)
Today, in contrast, the claimants have shown little appetite for bloodshed . To
be sure, each state is trying to shore up its claims through proactive
strategies that are, for the most part, premised on a negative-sum approach
to the dispute. As a result, the modern-day South China Sea story features

high-strung states busy stockpiling arms and playing at war at every

available opportunity.
But each nation has more to lose than to gain from a violent confrontation.
For China, any military clashno matter how briefcould torpedo the
permissive international environment that has assisted its rapid economic
rise. And in an era where growth is tapering, Beijing would suffer massive
reputational costs from a conflictcosts that might imperil its future
prosperity and expansion by pushing its neighbors into the arms of Chinas
strategic rival: the United States.
(Recommended: 5 Chinese Weapons of War America Should Fear)
The other claimants have even more to lose from a violent confrontation.
Protracted infighting would undermine the united front necessary to
effectively oppose the real threat to their claims: Chinese encroachment. And
if they tangled directly with China, then these other states would almost
certainly experience a quick and humiliating military defeat. Even as China
was capsizing their navies, it would also be playing havoc with their
economies. And on top of military losses and economic sanctions, these other
claimants would also likely suffer strategic setbacks as they surrendered
hard-earned ground in the South China Sea. This dismal calculus might
come out differently if these nations could assure themselves of American
involvement, but no state is willing to rely entirely on the promise of
American assistance.
(Recommended: 5 American Weapons of War China Should Fear)
Accordingly, no state wants to pick a fight in the South China Sea. This may
change in a few years: Chinese policy makers may move from an assertive
grand strategy to an aggressive one, or a smaller player may reach new
levels of desperation. But at least for now, any crisis is unlikely to be stateengineered.

No SCS escalation---every country has a stake in regional

trade flows which solves conflict
Nicolas Jenny 15, final year double degree master student currently based
at Fudan University in Shanghai, 1/28/15, Trade Goes on as Usual in the South
China Sea,
www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/01/28/trade_goes_on_as_usual_in_the_
south_china_sea_110939.html
International relations scholars and journalists have intensely debated the
reasons behind China's increased assertiveness in the South China Sea. But
Beijing's foreign policy actions in the region have made most countries
suspicious if not completely resentful of China. This has led some to claim
that, China today faces the worst regional environment since Tiananmen. Its

relations with Japan are at a record low; China-ASEAN ties have similarly
deteriorated due to the South China Sea disputes and China's heavy-handed
use of its clout to divide ASEAN.' Despite this resentment, analysts have
largely overlooked the trade dynamics between China and other claimants in
the South China Sea dispute. One would naturally assume that deep
suspicions or resentment of Beijing would translate into diminishing trade
ties, yet the opposite has taken place. For example, Vietnam recorded an
18.9% increase in Chinese imports in 2014 despite Hanoi's attempts to
broaden its import partners. The issue became particularly relevant following
China's decision to place an oil rig in disputed waters earlier in 2014. The
Philippines, no stranger to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea, also
reported a 12.4% increase of exports to China during the first nine months of
2014. Coincidentally, China is also the Philippines' third largest, and
Vietnam's largest trading partner. While smaller East Asian states continue to
hedge their bets against China, there is a resounding pattern in their trade
statistics - they all present a strong trade deficit in China's favour. Vietnam's
trade deficit with China reached a record high in 2014 while the Philippines'
highest trade deficit is with China, representing 16% of imports, a 35%
increase from previous years. Herein lays the conundrum of the South China
Sea dispute: while claimant states rally against Beijing's nine-dash line,
economically , they need China more than China needs them. Access to
China's market has forced foreign companies and their governments to
compromise on politics. While European companies have compromised on
issues such as internet censorship, Southeast Asia's governments have been
forced to compromise on sovereignty in the South China Sea. This economic
fact of life for Southeast Asian states has produced ripple effects across
policy. For example, following the deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam, Hanoi
promised to reimburse and rebuild China's factories damaged by the protests.
Similarly, the Philippines' economy suffered tremendously in 2012 when
China drastically cut banana imports. China will soon have successfully
leveraged its economic power to reach political ends - the consolidation of
the South China Sea as Beijing's core interest. It will not have primarily been
through vast military expansion as many had predicted, but rather through its
economic might. Trade has arguably been China's most widely used foreign
policy tool and as China's wealth increases, this is only set to continue. As it
should be remembered, the South China Sea dispute is not all about potential
energy deposits in the region. It is a dispute over competing visions of the
South China Sea and a weary China who sees itself surrounded. Heightened
trade flows between China and the claimant states can assure a certain
amount of stability in the region. And although many are quick to remind us
that trade cannot serve as a deterrent to conflict, today's globalised world
stands in stark contrast to the beginning of the 20th century. Even the
Philippine president, Aquino, argued that territorial disputes in the South
China Sea were unlikely to lead to conflict because no one was willing to
sacrifice the huge trade flows in the region. Therefore, despite the issues

over sovereignty and the occasional flare-ups between various claimants ,

peace, no matter how precarious, will prevail - no country is ready,
particularly China, to sacrifice trade at the expense of stability.

No China rise impact numerous checks on aggression.

Eikenberry, 15 (Karl W, retired United States Army lieutenant general who
served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from April 2009 to July 2011,
"Chinas Place in U.S. Foreign Policy," www.the-americaninterest.com/2015/06/09/chinas-place-in-u-s-foreign-policy/, CMR)
Chinas strategic options are not unlimited. Indeed, its foreign
policy choices are severely constrained both by formidable domestic problems
and by unfavorable international factors that the United States would be wise to consider
For all its ambition,

when formulating its response to Chinas increasing influence.

Internally, Beijings leaders face an interwoven array of daunting social,

environmental, economic, and political problems that , left unresolved, will limit
the states ability to generate national power and could even threaten the Communist
Partys monopolistic grip on political and societal control. A brief look at five of these issues makes clear
the severity of the situation.

Economic Restructuring: Some 100,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) account for about half of
Chinas economic assets. Despite 15 years of reform efforts, only half of the SOEs have been
corporatized, and their return on assets is not significantly different from those of the traditional SOEs.
Overall, SOE financial performance has deteriorated significantly since 2008, becoming a
major drag on economic growth. This drag serves as a source of serious political
opposition to enterprise reform, thereby limiting the national leaderships effort
to focus on strategic sectors such as aviation, energy, and
telecommunications.13
Nevertheless, the impetus for reform has not slackened over the past year, as both state and local SOEs

Serious political
obstacles to economic reform remain, however, including the fact that, for all of their
inherent inefficiencies, SOEs predictably provide jobs to workers, who, if
unemployed, might question both Party wisdom and its unchallenged supremacy. At the
same time, labor costs are rapidly rising. In 2013, for example, Chinas 269 million migrant
have been selling off non-strategic assets in accordance with Party policy direction.

workers earned an average of $410 per month, an increase of nearly 14 percent from 2012 and almost

Chinese firms are being forced to change

their enterprise models and export strategies as foreign companies choose lower-wage
twice the rate of the nations GDP.14 As a result,
alternatives to China.15
The three-decade transition from an agrarian to industrial-service economy, which saw the transition of
some 300 million people from rural to urban areas, will continue over the next two decades, with another

The economic
impact of this colossal resettlement has been staggering. Chinese investment in real
350 million peoplea number in excess of the entire U.S. populationstill to follow.

estate, which was $120 billion in 2003, grew to $980 billion in 2011.Chinese investment in real estate,

which was $120 billion in 2003, grew to $980 billion in 2011.

support this exploding urban population

The infrastructure required to

is massive.16

PRC debt loads have exploded over the past decade.

Government debt (a large percentage of which is higher-risk local government debt) to GDP ratio
stood at 53.5 percent in 2012, up from 32.5 percent in 2005 .17 Of greater concern is
the recent rapid rise of total debt (encompassing that from the corporate, household, and
financial sectors), which increased from 150 percent of GDP in 2009 to 250 percent
in 2014.18 Included in these figures are loans to SOEs that have poor repayment records, but that are
Adding to these difficulties,

often protected by political patronage. Moreover, the recent and dramatic rise of Chinas shadow banking
industry has complicated the central governments efforts to bring lending under control.19

Aging Population & Social Welfare Costs : The scope and pace of aging in Chinas population
pose other significant economic problems for the Party. Over the next twenty years, the ratio of
workers to retirees (at the current retirement age of sixty) will decrease from five-to-one
to two-to-one. This dramatic demographic shift is both exacerbated and made more
urgent by the success of the one child policy in place since 1979. It will not only
erode the huge economic stimulus and advantage of a young working population, but it will
also come at a point in Chinas modernization when it is more vulnerable to
the middle income trap.20Huge expenditures will be required to put into
place more comprehensive national health care and pension systems to help avoid that
potential pitfall.

Unequal Income Distribution: Chinas gap between its rich and poor , measured by
its Gini coefficient, has widened greatly since its opening to the world in 1979. In 2012, the head of Chinas
National Bureau of Statistics, Ma Jiantang, pegged it at 0.47-0.49, which is slightly below that of the United

The reasons for this growing gap in wealth

distribution are well understood: rapid urbanization on the backs of migrant
workers not offered basic social services (a variant of Americas own illegal immigrant
phenomenon, except that those affected are PRC citizens); the disparity in wealth between
the coastal regions and Chinas interior provinces ; the cumulative impact of quality
education and health care disproportionally available to the Party,
government, and urban elite; and widespread corruption (discussed below). In 2013,
States, but high for a developing country.21

the Third Plenum of the 18th Chinese Communist Party Congress noted the pressing need to attend to this
problem, but failed to offer any concrete proposals for doing so.22

Chinas economic miracle has occurred in

tandem with environmental catastrophe. Air and water quality, especially in Chinas
major urban areas, is among the worst in the world . In 2012, Chinas Vice Minister of
Environmental Degradation and Food Safety:

Environmental Protection, Wu Xiaoqing, stated that 40 percent of the countrys rivers and 55 percent of its
groundwater were unfit for drinking. Moreover, he noted that in rural China some 320 million people lack
access to safe drinking water.23 The cost of such economic externalities came to roughly $230 billion in

The scale of investment needed to adequately

address known environmental threats is extraordinary . For example, between 2011
2010, or about 3.5 percent of GDP.24

and 2020, the government plans to spend $850 billion in water-related projects alone.25 Food safety is
also a major issue and an increasingly politicized one. It was only in the face of mounting public pressure
that the Ministry of Environmental Protection admitted (in 2014) that the acreage of soil contamination
(from heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxins) of Chinas farmlands had reached a record high of 20
percent.

Most worrisome to Chinas leaders is the danger of losing their

monopoly on political power. President Xi (like his predecessors) routinely calls official corruption
a cancer that, if unattended, will destroy the Party. But by insisting on exclusive occupation of
Political Decay:

Chinas commanding political heights , the Party itself becomes more vulnerable
to dysfunction, corruption, and political decay as the number of political, economic, and
social contradictions multiply. China witnessed approximately 180,000 protests in 2010. Reflecting Party
anxieties, the state spends large sums of money to ensure stability maintenance. As recently as 2013,
Chinas expenditures for internal security exceeded those for its armed forces.As recently as 2013, Chinas
expenditures for internal security exceeded those for its armed forces.26
Perhaps the Party leaders greatest dilemma is that, while they understand the need to decentralize
economic and resource allocation decision-making, they seem driven to pursue further political
consolidation in hopes that political and economic power can somehow be disentangled. As a result, the
development of an independent economic entrepreneurial spirit, the establishment of a more robust rule of
law system, and the growth of civil society are all significantly retarded in China, even as pressure for
change continues to mount.
International Constraints on Chinas Rise

PRC leaders also face daunting obstacles in the international arena . These include
factors related to history and geopolitics, military potential, and ideological appeal.
History and Geography: China shares land borders with 14 countries, three of which it has fought limited

A major land
dispute with India remains unresolved, while Chinas historical influence in the
Russian Far East dating back to the Qing Dynasty continues to cause unease in
Moscow. Chinas expansive maritime claims in the East and South China Seas
have not only stimulated increasingly fractious disputes with Japan, the Philippines, and
Vietnam, but have also led to disagreements with North Korea, South Korea, Indonesia,
wars with during the past fifty years: Russia (as the Soviet Union), Vietnam, and India.

Malaysia, and Brunei. Pursuit of these claims has also excited responses in Washington because they
involve two American treaty allies and potentially undermine the principle of freedom of navigationa vital
U.S. security interest.27
Indeed, even as Party leaders seek to restore the prestige and influence of dynastic empires in centuries

Chinas neighbors show no desire to return to a tributary political order .

Moreover, China is not an ethnically monolithic state . Its populace includes restive non-Han
past,

Muslim citizens in its northwest Xinjiang Province who have ethnic kin in Central Asia, as well as a large
and culturally distinct Tibetan population in its southwest. Additionally, the PRC lays claim to ade
facto independent,

democratic Taiwan that evinces little desire to unify with the

mainland. Even the full assimilation of Hong Kong has proven both politically and socially challenging,
as demonstrated by the continuing pro-democracy movement. The tightening and expansion
of Chinese power is consistently contested both within its borders and in its
immediate neighborhoods.
Despite extensive modernization over the past 25 years, the Peoples
Liberation Army still lacks extended force projection or sustained blue water
naval capabilities. Chinas military can bring impressive power to bear at particular points along its
Military Limitations:

border and near coastal areas. It can also impose increasing costs on U.S. forces operating near its

the PLA lags far behind U.S. armed forces in terms of aggregate
Asia-Pacific regional, and especially global, capabilities.
territory. However,

given the costly political, economic, and social challenges that Chinas
leaders must address over the next two decades, it seems unlikely that the
Chinese armed forces will continue to enjoy the double-digit annual budget
increases that it has been provided since the mid-1990s. In addition, problems with
Moreover,

corruption, a lack of leadership initiative thanks to an over-centralized command structure, and the still
unproven ability of the PRC research and development establishment to produce equipment and systems
that rival those of the United States and its key allies all cast doubt on the PLAs ability to become a worldclass military power in the near- to mid-term.

Absence of Allies and Partners: A states power is measured by its own usable
capabilities and those of its relevant allies and partners in various
contingencies.Competent allies magnify a states power, and here China is at a tremendous
disadvantage when compared with the United States . Competent allies magnify a
states power, and here China is at a tremendous disadvantage when compared with the United

China has only one treaty allyNorth Koreaand is sharply at odds even
with that regime, whose interests are not always in line which those of the
PRC. The one cooperative security organization it nominally leads , the Shanghai
States.

Cooperative Organization (SCO), includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, but

no one takes it seriously as a functional military alliance. More important, the current
warming relations between Moscow and Beijing will likely cool once Beijing
intensifies its efforts to establish a new China-dominated Silk Road through
Central Asia, a move the Kremlin views as Chinese encroachment on a traditionally Russian sphere of
influence. Meanwhile, after losing its sway over its former quasi-ally Myanmar, Chinas most reliable source
of influence within ASEAN is a struggling Cambodia. And to date, the PLA has yet to establish any foreign
military bases of consequence.

The contrast with U.S. capabilities and assets could not be more striking . In the
Asia-Pacific region alone, America has active military alliances with Japan, Korea, Australia, the Philippines,
and Thailand, and special relationships with Singapore, New Zealand, and Taiwan. It has some 80,000
servicemen and servicewomen stationed throughout the region. It also leads the 28-member NATO

While China can unilaterally apply

concentrated pressure at specific locations on its periphery, the United States
can call upon a worldwide network of friends and allies to flexibly deal with a
wide variety of regional and global security challenges.
Alliance, the most powerful military coalition in the world.

Weak Ideational Appeal: Chinas global economic power is significant but its growth
trajectory is slowing. Even if Beijing can buy influence with its cash reserves, its political model is
not one that many states (never mind Hong Kong and Taiwan) aspire to adopt, sharply limiting Chinas
soft power appeal. The United States ranks ahead of China around the world (except in the Middle East)
in favorability ratings, and significantly so among those 1829 years of age.28 The once and very
temporarily vaunted Beijing Consensus, a system that marries market mechanisms to authoritarian
political control, remains a mirage. The Communist Party might yet develop a form of governance that is
universally attractive, but for now, China finds itself at a distinct disadvantage in the battle of political
ideas.

U.S. support for AIIB wont solve SCS conflict

Dr. Kawai, 15 --- Professor at the University of Tokyos Graduate School of
Public Policy (last modified on 8/7/2015, Masahiro Kawai, ASIAN
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE
STAKEHOLDER?, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Evolving
International Financial Order, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
***note --- this ev is footnote #15
15 Bergsten (2015) calls for the U.S. to reverse course and join AIIB with a
minority share. Lipscy (2015) also argues that the United States should
prefer a world in which China seeks to establish its influence and international
prestige by building multilateral development banks rather than one in which
it seeks to do so by building military capabilities. But, it is not clear if the U.S.

endorsement of AIIB will limit Chinas aggressive behavior, for example, in

the South China Sea. At any rate, it remains highly unlikely that the United
States will join AIIB for the time being, given the politics of approving funds
for subscription shares for the bank as well as views of China in Congress,
which has yet to approve IMF reforms that would give China a larger voice in
that institution.

No escalation or draw-in
Taylor, 14 -- Head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center Australian
National University (Spring, Brendan, The South China Sea is Not a
Flashpoint,
https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Taylor_PD
F.pdf)
History initially suggests that the South China Sea is not a flashpoint . The
loss of life resulting from the use of force there pales in comparison to those
in East Asias traditional flashpoints. For instance, in the unresolved Korean
War (195053), which remains at the heart of continuing tensions on the
Korean Peninsula, an estimated two million military personnel were either
killed or unaccounted for.7 A comparable number of casualties occurred in
the Chinese Civil War (19461949), which left todays Taiwan flashpoint as a
direct product.8 Further, at a time when some analysts are talking up the
prospects of war between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,
it is worth recalling that an estimated 1535 million perished during the
course of the second SinoJapanese War (193745).9
While history is not destiny, more recent estimates suggest that the
combustion of any one of these flashpoints today could prove equally
devastating. Richard Bush and Michael OHanlon of the Brookings Institution,
for example, predict that a conflict over Taiwan could spark a nuclear war
involving 1.5 billion people and produce a fundamental change in the
international order.10 Similar estimates produced at the time of the 199394
North Korean nuclear crisis suggested that war on the Korean Peninsula could
cost half a million lives and up to US$1 trillion in its first ninety days.11
Conflict between Asias two most powerful navies in the East China Sea could
prove equally devastating, particularly given that China and Japan are also
the worlds second- and third-largest economies, respectively. Total trade
between these two historical great powers of East Asia currently stands at
U.S. $345 billion.12
It is hard to envisage a credible scenario where a skirmish in the South
China Sea could erupt into a conflict of similar proportions. The nationalist
foundations of these disputes are fundamentally different from those
underpinning East Asias traditional flashpoints. By way of example, recent
polling suggests that 87 percent of the Chinese public view Japan negatively,
whilst 50 percent anticipate a military dispute with Japan.13 Reflecting this
sentiment, when Tokyo announced its decision to purchase contested Islands

in the East China Sea from their private owner in September 2012, this
sparked widespread anti-Japanese protests across China that spread to more
than 100 cities.14 Such public displays of nationalist sentiment stand in
marked contrast to June 2013 anti-China protests in Hanoi following
Vietnamese allegations that a Chinese vessel had rammed and damaged a
Vietnamese fishing boat. Subsequently, a mere 150 protesters gathered in
the city center.15 Crowds of comparable size have attended anti-Chinese
protests in the Philippines. For instance, a March 2012 protest outside the
Chinese Embassy in Manila that organizers expected to draw 1,000 protesters
attracted barely half that number.16
The strategic geography of the South China Sea also militates against it
being a genuine flashpoint. Throughout history, large bodies of water
have tended to inhibit the willingness and ability of adversaries to wage
war. In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, for instance, John Mearsheimer
refers to the stopping power of water, writing of the limits that large bodies
of water place on the capacity of states to project military powerrelative, at
least, to when they share common land borders.17 Even when clashes at sea
do occur, history suggests that these generally afford statesmen greater
time and space to find diplomatic solutions. As Robert Ross observes, in
such cases neither side has to fear that the others provocative diplomacy or
movement of troops is a prelude to attack and immediately escalate to
heightened military readiness. Tension can be slower to develop , allowing the
protagonists time to manage and avoid unnecessary escalation.18
Ross observation, in turn, dovetails elegantly with the issue of proximity,
which Hoyt regards as a defining feature of a flashpoint. The antagonists in
the South China Sea disputes are less proximate than in the case of the
Korean Peninsulawhere the two Koreas share a land border that remains the
most militarized on earth. The same can be said of the Taiwan flashpoint.
Indeed, the proximity of Taiwan to the mainland affords Beijing credible
strategic options and arguably even incentivesinvolving the use of force
that are not available to it in the South China Sea.19
Finally, and related to the third of Hoyts criteria, the South China Sea
cannot be said to engage the vital interests of Asias great powers.
To be sure, much has been made of Indias growing interests in this part of
the world particularly following reports of a July 2011 face-off between a
Chinese ship and an Indian naval vessel that was leaving Vietnamese
waters.20 However, New Delhis interests in the South China Sea remain
overwhelmingly economic, not strategic, driven as they are by the search for
oil. Moreover, even if New Delhi had anything more than secondary strategic
interests at stake in the geographically distant South China Sea, it is widely
accepted that Indias armed forces will for some time lack the capacity to
credibly defend these.21 Similarly, while much has been made of Tokyos
willingness to assist Manila with improving its maritime surveillance
capabilities,22 for reasons of history and geography, Tokyos interests in the

Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, the Korean Peninsula, and even the Taiwan
flashpoint dwarf those which it has at stake in the more distant South
China Sea. The extent to which this body of water genuinely engages the
vital interests of China and the United States continues to be overstated.

Theres no chance of armed conflict in the South China

Sea, but they also cant provide a lasting resolution to
tensions
Weissmann 15 Mikael Weissmann, Ph.D. in Peace and Development
Research from the University of Gothenburg, M.Soc.Sci. in Peace and Conflict
Studies from Uppsala University, B.A. in International Relations and
Economics from the University of Queensland, Research Fellow in the East
Asia Programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Senior
Researcher in War Studies at the Dept. of Military Studies at the Swedish
National Defence College, affiliated researcher at the East Asian Peace
program at Uppsala University, has been a visiting fellow at the University of
Warwick, Peking, Renmin, and China Foreign Affairs University, 2015 (The
South China Sea: Still No War on the Horizon, Asian Survey, Volume 55, Issue
3, May/June 2015, pages 596-617, University of California Press, Available to
subscribing institutions through JSTOR)
Drawing the four forms of transformation together, it can be concluded that
major armed conflict in the SCS is highly unlikely . Not only are large aspects
of the positive transformations that took place between 1991 and 2007 still in
existence, but all parties, including the United States and not least China,
would have a lot to lose from armed conflict. The concern is the negative
developments with regard to actor transformation, the big question being
where Xi Jinping is going. It is clear that foreign policy under his leadership
will be more active and ambitious, and as far as evidence indicates, so far it
leans toward a striving for achievement strategy. But that China can be
expected to pursue its assertive posturing and policy toward the SCS does
not entail that there will be war . Such a development, whether they would
wish it or not, would be against Chinas interests; it would risk undermining
domestic economic growth and prosperity, and in the longer term would
cause domestic political instability. Thus, it would put at risk not only the
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation but also the ultimate goal of regime
survival, which in turn is dependent on domestic stability.53
At the same time, it is clear that a final resolution of the SCS conflict in the
foreseeable future is not to be expected. But if China really does follow Deng
Xiaopings guidance, shelving disputes and instead engaging in joint
development, there is no cause for any great concern. However, if Beijing
should instead follow another of Deng Xiaopings maxims, that you should
hide your capabilities and bide your time, then of course the situation might

turn out differently. We know that China will not be a status quo power,
accepting the world as it is. But this is not the same as saying that China has
become a revisionist power, aiming to remodel the global order. China has
moved beyond being what Shaun Breslin has called a dissatisfied
responsible great power54 and become what is best described as a
responsible reformer striving for achievement. Such an actor can be
expected to do what is in its power to seek change for its own benefit, but
being overly aggressive in the SCS would not be in its interest , nor would
triggering an armed conflict with any of its South East Asian neighbors, not to
speak of the United States. Thus, there is still no war on the horizon in the
South China Sea.

no solve
Intractable differences spoil any concessions
Pei 14 (Minxin Pei is Tom and Margot Pritzker 72 Professor of Government at
Claremont McKenna College, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014, "How China
and America See Each Other",
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140755/minxin-pei/how-china-andamerica-see-each-other, CMR)
Any substantial shift in the balance of power between two countries is bound to change
their attitudes and behavior toward each other . It should come as no surprise, then, that
new strains have recently emerged in U.S.-Chinese relations. China has
adopted a more assertive foreign policy since 2010, taking tough stances in
territorial and maritime disputes with its neighbors. Its rapid military modernization
program and cyberattacks have unsettled Americans and their East Asian
allies. And Beijing has seen Washingtons response to this new toughness -- the socalled pivot to Asia -- as a thinly disguised attempt to contain Chinese power.
Maintaining a reasonable grasp of the fluid U.S.-Chinese relationship is hard enough; an even tougher
challenge is understanding the substantive disagreements between the two countries on the many issues
critical to preserving stable ties. A new collection of essays edited by the political scientist Nina Hachigian
attempts to accomplish both tasks. The idea behind Debating China: The U.S.-China Relationship in Ten
Conversations is simple but clever: for each of ten conversations, it pairs one leading American expert on
Asia with a Chinese counterpart to debate a specific bilateral issue. Hachigian moderates the series of
conversations by framing the key questions the participants should address; the debaters exchange
opinions and then, in a second round, focus on their disagreements. The result is a book that summarizes
and scrutinizes each sides positions on everything from human rights to climate change. As a whole, the

those optimistic about the future of U.S.Chinese ties will find little to cheer in these pages.

project is illuminating but disheartening;

RITES AND WRONGS

American and Chinese debaters share much common ground. They

agree, for example, that the U.S.-Chinese relationship has become plagued by
distrust, particularly as nationalism in China has surged . Remarkably, even
some Chinese scholars acknowledge that many of the structural causes of
friction will persist as long as Chinas domestic political system remains
unchanged.
On some issues, the

sharp , even fundamental, differences emerge in the exchanges on Chinas

military modernization, human rights, Taiwan, and regional security. The

But

debaters see these issues from clashing perspectives and question each others underlying premises. The
Chinese scholar Zhou Qi insists that

China does not see eye to eye with the West on

human rights because the Confucian order is based on societal rites -- prescribed codes of ritual
behavior -- rather than fundamental individual rights. Andrew Nathan, a Columbia University professor,
flatly rejects this claim, saying it implies that there is a Chinese exceptionalism that exempts Beijing from
complying with universal norms.

Coop fails No chance for real relations

Chen, 15 (Emily S. Chen is the 2014-2015 Silas Palmer Fellow and a
graduate student in East Asian Studies at Stanford University, International
Affairs Review, Summer 2015, Cooperation in Depth, Competition in Control:
Shaping a New Type of Great Power Relationship in Favor of the United
States, Vol. 23, No. 3, p. 82, CMR)
Relations between the U nited S tates and China have long faltered due to
mutual mistrust, which brews potential conflicts and adds more vulnerability to an already-volatile
relationship. According to Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, the mutual mistrust between the United
States and China stems from three sources.8 The first is fundamental differences
between the two countries political systems, which are the products of
different political traditions, value systems, and strategic cultures . To the
U nited S tates, Chinas authoritarian system of government, occasional suppression of
dissent, and non-transparency make its government untruthful .9 To China,
the U nited S tates pressure on these issues is a bid to sabotage Chinas
legitimacy and autonomy.10 The second source of distrust comes from each
governments misperception of the others foreign relations ; each side tends
to see the others moves as strategically designed , even when they are not. As
Lieberthal and Wang indicated, the investments from Chinas state-owned enterprises in the United States
are often regarded doubtfully as part of the Chinese leaderships grand strategy, not as economic activities
driven by commercial interests.11

The perception of a narrowing power gap between the

United States and China also brews strategic distrust. According to a survey conducted by the Pew
Research Center, pluralities or majorities in 33 out of 39 countries say China has replaced or will replace
the United States, and 47% of Americans perceive that China has replaced or will replace United States. 12

Whether or not the perception that the U nited S tates relative power is in
decline is accurate, it is certainly widespread . While the United States may have concerns
that China has ambitions to challenge its world position, China also harbors apprehensions
about whether the U nited S tates intends to thwart Chinas development . Leaders in
Washington and Beijing are discreet about assessing their countries power and position in the world.

Nationalists in both societies, however, often characterize bilateral relations as a

zero-sum game, calling on the government to restrain its contact with the other country.13 In the
democratic United States, political leaders subject to regular elections are forced to account for public
opinion, even marginal viewpoints that have media or financial support, in assessing policy options.

In

authoritarian China, public impressions of a foreign nation are highly influenced by the government,
and the government itself has encouraged nationalism to serve its policy ends . If
Beijing does not carefully manage Chinese nationalism, domestic unrest could threaten regime
legitimacy. Therefore, in both nations, there is a limited set of feasible policy
options available to top leaders.

Plan cant solve SCS conflict military interference

thumps
Sunday Times 15- (Rebecca Perring, China warns US war is INEVITABLE
unless rival superpower halts meddling, 5/27/15,
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/580071/China-United-States-warinevitable-South-Sea-conflict-white-paper)//PS

Coinciding with the publication of the white paper, an editorial in The Global
Times- a tabloid newspaper mouthpiece for the ruling Communist Partyissued a warning to the US to halt its protests over the South China Sea. Last
week, Chinas foreign ministry revealed it had lodged a complaint with the US
over an American spy plane that flew over parts of the disputed archipelago.
The article read: We do not want a military conflict with the United States,
but if it were to come, we have to accept it. It added that China should
carefully prepare for the possibility of war with Washington and that if the
United States bottom line is that China is to halt activities, then a US-China
war is inevitable in the South China Sea. Despite last weeks protest from
China, the US has vowed to keep up air and sea patrols in the South China
Sea. He said development work was the same as building roads and homes
on mainland China and that it would benefit the whole of the international
society. The spokesman added: From the prospective of sovereignty, there
is absolutely no difference some external countries are also busy meddling
in South china Sea affairs. Security experts have warned there is a serious
risk of an airspace incident near the Spratly islands, which could escalate
rapidly into a US-China military conflict. Robert Dujarric, director of the
Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple
University said: I think the concern has to be that China misjudges the
situation. Neither party wants a war if it can be avoided, but there are red
lines for both sides.

Cooperation is strong in several key areas despite

disagreements on economic issues --- and OBOR, not AIIB
could determine evaluation of Chinese policy
***OBOR = Chinas One Belt One Road policy

Solis & Lieberthal, 15 --- Senior Fellow & Philip Knight Chair in Japan
Studies at Brookings, AND **Senior Fellow, John L. Thornton China Center at
Brookings (9/30/15, Mireya & Kenneth, INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC
GOVERNANCE AND CHINAS RISE: HOW SHOULD THE UNITED STATES AND
JAPAN RESPOND? http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2015/09/30international-economic-governance-chinasrise/20150930_china_economic_governance_transcript.pdf, article
downloaded 6/12/16, JMP)
MS. SOLS: So let me ask a very big picture question. We talked about
whether China is a revisionist or reformist power; we talked about whether
established powers are making sufficient room to accommodate the change
in relative capabilities or not in established Bretton Woods institutions but
also having an open mind about new institutions. And I think when people
discuss this they want to know if ahead of us we have a period of growing a
strategic rivalry or whether we think that there could be successful
communication, successful engagement, and therefore, that we can find a
way to collaborate in the management of the world economy.

So what would be the markers to tell us where are we going? I know this is an
extremely challenging question but I think its probably in the back of
everybodys minds here. We care about this because what this may mean for
the quality of governance in the future but also for the quality of interaction
along the major powers in the world.
So where are we heading?
MR. LIEBERTHAL: Ill take an initial stab (laughter).
MS. SOLS: Wise choice.
MR. LIEBERTHAL: Every time you comment, Mireya, now I have a much bigger
question, your questions do indeed keep getting bigger but the first of those I
thought was big enough at the start (laughter).
If you look at the U.S. and China we seek now to cooperate as much as we
can on major global issues. Those are especially in areas now like climate
change, nuclear nonproliferation; we are developing more cooperation in
counterterrorism, in military to military relations, we are moving that forward.
So when you talk about what the nature of the relationships will be in the
future the economic side is a part of that but many of these other issues
determine the degree of trust in the long term intentions of another country .
My sense is at this point this doesnt fully deal with your question obviously,
but as a starting point my sense is at this point that the U.S. and China are
able to have considerable confidence in the agreements that they reach in a
number of different areas . We understand each other pretty well. What we
are very unclear about is long term intentions of the other country and so
how much you can trust them strategically down the road.
And I think thats a work in progress. There is no single item that is going to
flip a switch on that shy of some huge escalatory event. Very likely this is
going to be a matter of, as this whole conversation has suggested, we
focused primarily on the central issues of this panel, is how do these
institutions develop? How do we react over time? Do we build confidence or
on balance are things going to move in a different direction.
One last comment Id make is that -- I know this is somewhat outside the
scope of this panel I think one of the big issues that will affect thinking
about Chinas revisionism or not is going to be the one belt one road effort
and how that plays out. And Im frankly of I have more confidence in the
AIIB than I do in the one belt one road.

No deliberate containment policy

Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.

Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
5. WHY THE U.S. ERRED
The key questions going forward are why the U.S. governments initial
reaction was defensive and whether it is possible to learn from this
experience to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. Perhaps the
most important thing to note about the Obama administrations AIIB policy is
that, rhetoric notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to conclude that the
response to AIIB was the product of a deliberate plan to contain China .
Instead, the administration may have opted for a policy of undermining AIIB
because it was the path of least resistance and institutional factors made it
more difficult to opt for a subtler, accommodating response to the bank.

AT: Cyber Addon

No risk of cyber escalation
Caylor 2-1-16 [Mathew. The Cyber Threat to Nuclear Deterrence 2/1/16
http://warontherocks.com/2016/02/the-cyber-threat-to-nucleardeterrence/ //GBS-JV]
The perception that cyber threats will ultimately undermine the relevance or
effectiveness of nuclear deterrence is flawed in at least three keys areas.
First among these is the perception that nuclear weapons or their command
and control systems are similar to a heavily defended corporate network. The
critical error in this analogy is that there is an expectation of IP-based
availability that simply does not exist in the case of American nuclear
weapons they are not online . Even with physical access, the proprietary
nature of their control system design and redundancy of the National
Command and Control System (NCCS) makes the possibility of successfully
implementing an exploit against either a weapon or communications system
incredibly remote . Also, whereas the cyber domain is characterized by
significant levels of risk due to a combination of bias toward automated
safeguards and the liability of single human failures, nuclear weapon safety
and surety are predicated on balanced elements of stringent human
interaction and control . From two-person integrity in physical inspections
and loading, to the rigorous mechanisms and authority required for weapons
release, human beings serve as a multi-factor safeguard while retaining the
ultimate role to protect the integrity of nuclear deterrence against cyber
threats. To a large degree, the potential vulnerabilities caused by wireless
communications and physical intrusions into areas holding nuclear material
are already mitigated via secure communications that are not linked to the
outside and multiple layers of physical security systems. While there has
been a great deal of publicity surrounding the Y-12 break-in of 2012, the truth
is that the three people involved never got near any nuclear material or
technology. Without state-level resourcing in the billions of dollars, the
technical sophistication required to pursue a Stuxnet-like attack against
nuclear weapons is most likely beyond the capability of even the most gifted
group of hackers . For all intents, this excludes terrorist organizations and
cyber criminals from the field of threats and restricts it to those nations that
already possess nuclear weapons. Nuclear-weapon states, however, have the
full-spectrum cyber threat capability referenced in the Defense Science Board
report and would most likely be influenced by an understanding of the
elements of classic nuclear deterrence strategy. In the case of first strike, no
cyber weapon could be expected to perform at a rate higher than any
conventional anti-nuclear capability (i.e., not 100 percent effective).
Therefore, an adversarys nuclear threat would be perceived to endure ,

thereby negating and dissuading the effort to use and employ a cyber
weapon against an adversarys nuclear force. Additionally, just as missile
defense systems have been historically controversial due to perceived
destabilizing effects, it is reasonable to conclude that these nuclear-weapon
states would view the attempt to deploy a cyber capability against their
nuclear stockpiles from a similar perspective. Finally, the very existence of
nuclear weapons is often enough to alter the risk analysis of an adversary.
With virtually no chance of remote or unauthorized detonation (which would
be the desired results of a sabotage event), the most probable cyber threat to
any nuclear stockpile is that of espionage. Attempted cyber intrusions at the
U.S. National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) and its efforts to bolster
cybersecurity initiatives provide clear evidence that this is already underway.
However, theft of design information or even more robust intelligence on the
location of stored nuclear weapons cannot eliminate the potential destruction
that even a handful of nuclear weapons can bring to an adversary. Knowledge
alone, particularly the imperfect knowledge that cyber espionage is likely to
offer, is incapable of drastically altering an adversarys risk calculus . In fact,
quite the opposite is true. An adversary with greater understanding of the
nuclear capabilities of a rival is forced to consider courses of action to
prevent escalation , potentially increasing the credibility of a states nuclear
deterrence. Despite the growing sophistication in cyber capabilities and the
willingness to use them for espionage or in concert with kinetic attack, the
strategic value of nuclear weapons has not been diminished. The insulated
architecture combined with a robust and redundant command-and-control
system makes the existence of any viable cyber threat of exploitation
extremely low . With the list of capable adversaries limited by both funding
and motivation, it is highly unlikely that any nation will possess , or even
attempt to develop , a cyber weapon sufficient to undermine the credibility of
nuclear weapons . In both psychological and physical terms, the threat of the
megabyte will never possess the ability to overshadow the destructive force
of the megaton. Although the employment of cyberspace for military effect
has brought new challenges to the international community, the role of
nuclear weapons and their associated deterrence against open and
unconstrained global aggression are as relevant now as they were in the Cold
War.

No chance of successful cyber-attacks --- defense is

evolving faster than offense
Thomas Rid 12, PhD, reader in war studies @ Kings College London, former
visiting scholar @ Hebrew University, has previously worked at the School for
Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins, and RAND, Think Again:
Cyberwar, March/April, Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/cyberwar?page=0,1

"Cyberattacks Are Becoming Easier." Just the opposite . U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R.
Clapper warned last year that the volume of malicious software on American networks had more than tripled since 2009 and that more than 60,000 pieces of malware are
now discovered every day. The United States, he said, is undergoing "a phenomenon known as 'convergence,' which amplifies the opportunity for disruptive cyberattacks,
including against physical infrastructures." ("Digital convergence" is a snazzy term for a simple thing: more and more devices able to talk to each other, and formerly

Just because there's more malware , however, doesn't

mean that attacks are becoming easier . In fact, potentially damaging or life-threatening cyberattacks should be more
difficult to pull off. Why? Sensitive systems generally have built-in redundancy and safety
systems , meaning an attacker's likely objective will not be to shut down a system, since merely forcing the shutdown of one control
system, say a power plant, could trigger a backup and cause operators to start looking for
the bug. To work as an effective weapon, malware would have to influence an active process -- but not bring it to a screeching halt. If the
malicious activity extends over a lengthy period, it has to remain stealthy. That's a more difficult trick than
separate industries and activities able to work together.)

hitting the virtual off-button. Take Stuxnet, the worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2010. It didn't just crudely shut down the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear
facility; rather, the worm subtly manipulated the system. Stuxnet stealthily infiltrated the plant's networks, then hopped onto the protected control systems, intercepted
input values from sensors, recorded these data, and then provided the legitimate controller code with pre-recorded fake input signals, according to researchers who have
studied the worm. Its objective was not just to fool operators in a control room, but also to circumvent digital safety and monitoring systems so it could secretly manipulate

Stuxnet required extremely detailed intelligence about

the systems it was supposed to compromise, and the same will be true for
other dangerous cyberweapons. Yes, "convergence," standardization, and sloppy defense of control-systems
software could increase the risk of generic attacks, but the same trend has also caused defenses against the most
coveted targets to improve steadily and has made reprogramming highly
specific installations on legacy systems more complex, not less.
the actual processes. Building and deploying

Cyberwar wont happen and theres no impact to cyber terror reports are overhyped, international norms deter, and other
states check escalation
Valeriano 15
BRANDON VALERIANO is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences at
the University of Glasgow. RYAN C. MANESS is a Visiting Fellow of Security and
Resilience Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Foreign Affairs, May
13, 2015, The Coming Cyberpeace,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-13/coming-cyberpeace
The era of cyberconflict is upon us; at least, experts seem to accept that
cyberattacks are the new normal. In fact, however, evidence suggests that
cyberconflict is not as prevalent as many believe. Likewise, the severity of
individual cyber events is not increasing , even if the frequency of overall
attacks has risen. And an emerging norm against the use of severe statebased cybertactics contradicts fear-mongering news reports about a coming
cyberapocalypse. The few isolated incidents of successful state-based
cyberattacks do not a trend make. Rather, what we are seeing is
cyberespionage and probes, not cyberwarfare. Meanwhile, the international
consensus has stabilized around a number of limited acceptable uses of
cybertechnologyone that prohibits any dangerous use of force.
Despite fears of a boom in cyberwarfare, there have been no major or
dangerous hacks between countries. The closest any states have come to

such events occurred when Russia attacked Georgian news outlets and
websites in 2008; when Russian forces shut down banking, government, and
news websites in Estonia in 2007; when Iran attacked the Saudi Arabian oil
firm Saudi Aramco with the Shamoon virus in 2012; and when the United
States attempted to sabotage Irans nuclear power systems from 2007 to
2011 through the Stuxnet worm. The attack on Sony from North Korea is just
the latest overhyped cyberattack to date , as the corporate giant has
recovered its lost revenues from the attack and its networks are arguably
more resilient as a result. Even these are more probes into vulnerabilities
than full attacks. Russias aggressions show that Moscow is willing to use
cyberwarfare for disruption and propaganda, but not to inflict injuries or
lasting infrastructural damage. The Shamoon incident allowed Iran to punish
Saudi Arabia for its alliance with the United States as Tehran faced increased
sanctions; the attack destroyed files on Saudi Aramcos computer network
but failed to do any lasting damage. The Stuxnet incident also failed to
create any lasting damage , as Tehran put more centrifuges online to
compensate for virus-based losses and strengthened holes in their system.
Further, these supposedly successful cases of cyberattacks are balanced by
many more examples of unsuccessful ones. If the future of cyberconflict
looks like today, the international community must reassess the severity of
the threat.
Cyberattacks have demonstrated themselves to be more smoke than fire.
This is not to suggest that incidents are on the decline, however. Distributed
denial-of-service attacks and infiltrations increase by the minuteevery
major organization is probed constantly, but only for weaknesses or new
infiltration methods for potential use in the future. Probes and pokes do not
destabilize states or change trends within international politics. Even
common cyber actions have little effect on levels of cooperation and conflict
between states.
NORMCORE IS HERE TO STAY
A protocol of restraint has emerged as the volume of cyberattacks has
increased. State-based cyberattacks are expected, and in some cases
tolerated, as long as they do not rise to the level of total offensive operations
direct and malicious incidents that could destroy infrastructure or critical
facilities. These options are apparently off the table for states , since they
would lead to physical confrontation, collateral damage, and economic
retaliation.
The reproducibility of cyberattacks has also led states to exercise restraint.
Enemies can replicate successful cyberweapons easily if source code and
programs find their way into the wild or are reverse-engineered.
Cyberweapons are not simple to design , either, which makes their use

limited: Stuxnet took years of work by U.S. intelligence (with help from Israel)
and cost hundreds of millions of dollarsand it still failed. The risk of creating
collateral damage is high, since cyberweaponry cannot provide surgical
precision and can spread into other networks of possible allies of the
attackers. For example, the Stuxnet worm, intended for Irans nuclear
programs network, showed up in Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan,
among other countries. As witnessed in the Russian attack on Georgia, the
potential for conflict diffusion is high, as third-party allies can enter conflicts
easily. Estonia sent its Computer Emergency Readiness Team experts to
Georgia to keep the countrys crucial networks up and running. Poland freed
up bandwidth for servers in its territory to keep Georgian government
websites up and its people informed. Finally, the risk of retaliation is high, as
it is in any war, especially as attribution of perpetrators is getting easier to
trace with better forensic techniques. The only drawback is that exposing
attribution capabilities often exposes ongoing infiltration methods.
All of these considerations have meant that, so far, cyberconflict has adhered
to existing international conflict norms. That there have been no major
operations resulting in death or the destruction of physical equipment
(outside of the Saudi Aramco incident and Stuxnet) suggests trends toward
stability and safety. Cyberoperations are increasing, but only in terms of
small-scale actions that have limited utility or damage potential. The truly
dangerous cyberactions that many warn against have not occurred, even in
situations where observers would think them most likely: within the Ukrainian
conflict or during NATOs 2011 operations in Libya. The only demonstrable
cyberactivity in the Ukraine crisis has been espionage-level attacks. There is
no propaganda, denial of service, or worm or virus activity, as there was in
past conflicts involving Russia and post-Soviet states.
The overall trend in cyberwarfare indicates that the international community
is enjoying a period of stability. The chart below demonstrates that although
cybertactics are increasingly popular, the severity of these attacks remains
low. On a scale of one to five, where one is a nuisance attack (a website
being defaced, for example) and five is a cyber-related death, few attacks
register above a two.
DRAWING COMPARISONS
Although the public may fear cyberthreats, it remains extremely trusting of
the existing digital infrastructure. People trust the Internet with their
connections, private contacts, banking information, personal lives,
professional careers, and even romantic interests. Such confidence may be
unwarranted, but resilience, not apprehension, is key to surviving in the
coming era of low-level Internet-based attacks and probes.
States must be willing to make dramatic changes to their perceptions of
Internet security and governance if they are to prevent cyberattacks. Most

states lack functional cooperation between government and private industry

for low-level cyber infiltrations, including the United States and EU countries.
In addition to greater cooperation between public and private sectors, states
and companies must pursue stronger cyberhygiene regimens (providing
internal training to prevent potential threats) and reform the infrastructure
that supports banking, electric, and health-care systems. Finally, education
initiatives would help empower citizens to understand how the Web handles
their transactions. Few understand how online banking, health-care
databases, and utility grids work on the Internet. Education can help people
and citizensunderstand the true nature of cyberthreats.
Here, we can look to the U.S. experience with terrorism: in both instances,
fear is the result of imagined consequences. Terrorism has given birth to an
industry built to combat threats, and a similar process is now under way with
regard to cyberattacks. The general response to terrorism has been
counterproductive and damaging, lending itself to hyperbole and
overreaction. It is troubling to see the same path repeated with
cyberwarfare , as an industry has sprung up within the private sector and
military to meet the threat. The fact that there is little evidence of severe
cyberattacks should give pause.

--- XT: No Cyber Impact

Cyberwar isnt an existential threat --- best studies prove
Healey 13 Jason, Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic
Council, "No, Cyberwarfare Isn't as Dangerous as Nuclear War", 3/20,
www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/20/cyber-attacks-notyet-an-existential-threat-to-the-us
America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite recent
warnings . Our cybervulnerabilities are undoubtedly grave and the threats we face are severe but
far from comparable to nuclear war . The most recent alarms come in a Defense Science Board
report on how to make military cybersystems more resilient against advanced threats (in short, Russia or China). It warned
that the "cyber threat is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War."
Such fears were also expressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2011. He called cyber
"The single biggest existential threat that's out there" because "cyber actually more than theoretically, can attack our

While it is true that cyber attacks might do these

things, it is also true they have not only never happened but are far more
difficult to accomplish than mainstream thinking believes . The consequences from cyber
infrastructure, our financial systems."

threats may be similar in some ways to nuclear, as the Science Board concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly
dissimilar. Eighty years ago, the generals of the U.S. Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers would easily topple

A study of the 25year history of cyber conflict, by the Atlantic Council and Cyber Conflict Studies Association, has
shown a similar dynamic where the impact of disruptive cyberattacks has been
consistently overestimated. Rather than theorizing about future cyberwars or extrapolating from today's
other countries and cause their populations to panic, claims which did not stand up to reality.

concerns, the history of cyberconflict that have actually been fought, shows that cyber incidents have so far tended to

No attacks, so far,
have been both widespread and persistent. There have been no
authenticated cases of anyone dying from a cyber attack. Any widespread
disruptions, even the 2007 disruption against Estonia, have been short-lived causing no significant GDP
have effects that are either widespread but fleeting or persistent but narrowly focused.

loss. Moreover, as with conflict in other domains, cyberattacks can take down many targets but keeping them down over
time in the face of determined defenses has so far been out of the range of all but the most dangerous adversaries such
as Russia and China. Of course, if the United States is in a conflict with those nations, cyber will be the least important of

Plutonium trumps bytes in a shooting

war. This is not all good news. Policymakers have recognized the problems since at least 1998 with little significant
progress. Worse, the threats and vulnerabilities are getting steadily more worrying. Still, experts have been
warning of a cyber Pearl Harbor for 20 of the 70 years since the actual Pearl
Harbor . The transfer of U.S. trade secrets through Chinese cyber espionage could someday
accumulate into an existential threat. But it doesn't seem so seem just yet , with
the existential threats policymakers should be worrying about.

only handwaving estimates of annual losses of 0.1 to 0.5 percent to the total U.S. GDP of around $15 trillion. That's bad,
but

it doesn't add up to an existential crisis or "economic cyberwar."

Low risk of cyberwar-too hard to take down multiple

targets and keep them down. Only 3 percent of attacks
are actually scary.
Cavelty, Center for Security Studies, 2012

(Myriam Dunn, The Militarisation of Cyber Security as a Source of Global

Tension, 10-22, http://isn.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Special-Feature/Detail/?
lng=en&id=153888&tabid=1453350669&contextid774=153888&contextid7
75=153903, ldg)
However,

in the entire history of computer networks, there are no examples of

cyber attacks that resulted in actual physical violence against persons
(nobody has ever died from a cyber incident), and only very few had a
substantial effect on property (Stuxnet being the most prominent). So far, cyber attacks have not caused
serious long-term disruptions. They are risks that can be dealt with by individual entities
using standard information security measures, and their overall costs remain
low in comparison to other risk categories such as financial risks. These facts
tend to be almost completely disregarded in policy circles. There are several reasons
why the threat is overrated. First, as combating cyber threats has become a highly
politicised issue, official statements about the level of threat must also be
seen in the context of competition for resources and influence between various
bureaucratic entities. This is usually done by stating an urgent need for action and describing the overall threat as big and

Second, psychological research has shown that risk perception, including

the perception of experts, is highly dependent on intuition and emotions.
Cyber risks, especially in their more extreme form, fit the risk profile of socalled dread risks, which are perceived as catastrophic , fatal, un- known, and basically
uncontrollable. There is a propensity to be disproportionally afraid of these risks
despite their low probability, which translates into pressure for regulatory action of all sorts and the
willingness to bear high costs of uncertain benefit Third, the media distorts the threat
perception even further. There is no hard data for the assumption that the
level of cyber risks is actually rising beyond the perception of impact and fear. Some IT security
rising.

companies have recently warned against over-emphasising sophisticated attacks just because we hear more about them.

In 2010, only about 3 per cent of all incidents were considered so

sophisticated that they were impossible to stop. The vast majority of
attackers go after low-hanging fruit, which are small to medium sized
enterprises with bad defences . These types of incidents tend to remain under the radar of the media and
even law enforcement. Cyber war remains unlikely Since the potentially devastating effects of cyber attacks are so scary,
the temptation is very high not only to think about worst-case scenarios, but also to give them a lot of (often too much)

However, most experts agree that strategic cyber

war remains highly unlikely in the foreseeable future, mainly due to the
uncertain results such a war would bring, the lack of motivation on the part of
the possible combatants, and their shared inability to defend against
counterattacks. Indeed, it is hard to see how cyber attacks could ever become truly effective for military
purposes: It is exceptionally difficult to take down multiple, specific targets and
keep them down over time . The key difficulty is proper reconnaissance and targeting, as well as the need
weight despite their very low probability.

to deal with a variety of diverse systems and be ready for countermoves from your adversary. Furthermore, nobody can be
truly interested in allowing the unfettered proliferation and use of cyber war tools, least of all the countries with the
offensive lead in this domain. Quite to the contrary, strong arguments can be made that the worlds big powers have an
overall strategic interest in developing and accepting internationally agreed norms on cyber war, and in creating
agreements that might pertain to the development, distribution, and deployment of cyber weapons or to their use (though
the effectiveness of such norms must remain doubtful). The most obvious reason is that the countries that are currently
openly discussing the use of cyber war tools are precisely the ones that are the most vulnerable to cyber warfare attacks
due to their high dependency on information infrastructure. The features of the emerging information environment make it
extremely unlikely that any but the most limited and tactically oriented instances of computer attacks could be contained.
More likely, computer attacks could blow back through the interdependencies that are such an essential feature of the
environment. Even relatively harmless viruses and worms would cause considerable random disruption to businesses,
governments, and consumers. This risk would most likely weigh much heavier than the uncertain benefits to be gained

from cyber war activities. Certainly, thinking about (and planning for) worst-case scenarios is a legitimate task of the
national security apparatus.

Also, it seems almost inevitable that until cyber war is

proven to be ineffective or forbidden, states and non-state actors who have
the ability to develop cyber weapons will try to do so, because they appear
cost-effective, more stealthy, and less risky than other forms of armed
conflict. However, cyber war should not receive too much attention at the expense of more plausible and possible
cyber problems. Using too many resources for high- impact, low-probability events and therefore having less resources
for the low to middle impact and high probability events does not make sense, neither politically, nor strategically and
certainly not when applying a cost-benefit logic.

Containment Good --- 2nc Prefer Our Evidence

Affirmative pro-engagement evidence relies on outdated
and flawed assumptions of China
Mann, 9/17/15 --- fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of International
Studies (James, Americas painfully outdated approach to China,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/changing-the-rules-ofengagement/2015/09/17/d96c955a-5bd2-11e5-b38e06883aacba64_story.html, downloaded 4/22/16, JMP)
This summer, President Obama offered a pithy description of the way that
inertia sometimes prevents the United States from discarding old ideas that
no longer fit current circumstances.
Sometimes we allow ourselves to be trapped by a certain way of doing
things, he said. We dont have to be imprisoned by the past. When
something isnt working, we can and will change.
The president was talking about Cuba. But he should also apply these words
with equal force to U.S. policy toward China.
As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping next
week, American thinking about China seems stuck on concepts developed in
the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Since that time, however, China has evolved in
ways that few, if any, in Washington saw coming. It has become more
assertive overseas, more repressive at home and more mercantilist in its
trade practices than was anticipated two decades ago. Back then, American
leaders regularly predicted that trade and prosperity would produce a more
open China, one that would ease into the existing international system
created under U.S. leadership.
Yet even as China moves in new directions, we use the mindset of the past
when we talk about it . We continue to draw on ideas dating to Richard
Nixons opening even though it seems likely that Nixon himself, were he
alive today, would take a much tougher stance toward China than he did in
1972.
Several intellectual traps stand in the way of developing new approaches.
The first is the notion of engagement. This concept dates to the period after
the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when President George H.W. Bush
resisted proposals to cut off all contact with Chinese leaders. Instead, he laid
down a policy of engagement meaning that his administration would meet
with Chinese leaders in hopes of changing them. President Bill Clinton
perpetuated the use of engagement, and it has become a catchphrase for
conciliatory, non-punitive approaches to our differences.

But it was never really clear what engagement sought, other than meetings
and talk. And now, a quarter century after Tiananmen, when no one suggests
cutting off contact, engagement has lost whatever slight meaning it once
held.
Likewise, those who resist any policy change frequently argue that, beginning
with Nixon, eight presidents in a row have come around to roughly the same
China policies and that therefore these policies should not be altered. This
idea also has a history. Since the Nixon era, several presidents most
notably Ronald Reagan and Clinton have campaigned promising to change
U.S. policy toward China, only to do an about-face in office.
Yet the history isnt so simple. Obama, for example, actually did a reverse
about-face: He set out to avoid conflict, then toughened his approach after
his first year in office. More fundamentally, as Obamas words on Cuba
recognize, what a series of predecessors have done does not answer what
the United States should do when circumstances change. Nixon himself
inherited a China policy carried out by his four immediate predecessors, but
rightly reversed the policy.
Then there are the recurrent calls for a G-2. It is sometimes proposed that
China and the United States should reach a broad strategic accommodation
allowing them, together, to guide the affairs of the world. This idea gained
strength during the financial crisis, when China appeared to be the
economically strongest partner for the United States. More recently, Xis
repeated proposal for a new type of major-power relationship seems a
variant of the old calls for a Group of 2.
But such formulations overlook larger realities. They implicitly downgrade the
interests of U.S. allies and friends (Japan, India, South Korea and the
European Union, for starters) who would naturally feel threatened by the
notion of the United States and China teaming up without them. They also
ignore fundamental differences in values and political systems. Do advocates
expect the United States to stay silent on issues such as Chinas severe
repression of dissent?
The underlying reality is that the congruence of strategic interests that held
the United States and China together in the late Cold War no longer exists.
And the desire of the U.S. business community for trade and investment in
China, which drove U.S. policy in the 1990s, has also been transformed:
These days, U.S. businesses tend to come to the White House not to get help
in expanding trade but looking for a tougher line on issues such as
intellectual property and cybertheft. In this climate, efforts to perpetuate the
old U.S.-China relationship seem increasingly out of touch.
The truth is, the United States China policy is already changing at the
working levels of government and at the grass-roots level, but our overriding
ideas about this relationship have not kept pace. Over the next few years, a

new U.S. policy toward China is sure to emerge, but it may do so gradually,
from the bottom up.
As it does, some simple concepts could be brought back into play. One is the
idea that China should be treated by the same rules as other countries.
Another is the notion of reciprocity: When China penalizes U.S. businesses or
media, the United States should respond with similar limits on Chinese
entities. We should develop a more businesslike approach, forsaking the
dream that some personalized diplomacy or dramatic communiqu can bring
back the special relationship of the past.
The United States and China are in a new era. Its time to develop policies
and ideas that dont try fruitlessly to replicate the past.

Alt Causes / No Impact

Relations disputes inevitable but wont escalate.
Gurtov, 14 (Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland
State University, also Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, China-US Focus,
March 10, 2014, "Back to the Cold War? The US-China Military Competition",
http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/back-to-the-cold-war-the-uschina-military-competition/, CMR)
the military side of US-China relations is not worry-free .
PRC and US security experts recently characterized the relationship as
one of strategic distrust. Mutual assurances , a multitude (around 90) of Track 1 dialogue
groups, and a high level of economic interdependence have not been sufficient to offset
suspicions . Some of the language used by influential people in both countries resembles Cold War
rhetoric. Even those Chinese specialists who value the relationship with the United
States and say conflict would be disastrous also believe the United States is the one
country that stands in the way of Chinas full rise to major-power status .
Meantime, US leaders regularly assure China that they wish it peace and
prosperity, but feed Chinese anxieties by rebalancing forces in ways that raise
Nevertheless,
Eminent

the specter of containment and by conditioning acceptance of China as a responsible stakeholder on

support of US policy preferences. Nationalism is fanning the fires in both countries :
China is determined to assert itself as a responsible great power on territorial and strategic issues, while
the US is equally determined to maintain its paramount position in the Pacific.

These are not the

ingredients for confidence building.

And confidence building is what is badly needed now.

good news , revealed at a US Naval Institute conference earlier this year, is that USChina military engagement on security issues will increase 20 percent this
year , and that China will attend the RIMPAC exercises for the first time in 2014. This
is occurring despite concern among the navy brass about a China-Japan war ,

One piece of

which might trigger US involvement under its security treaty with Japan. More such military-to-military
ties, both bilateral and multilateral (with Japan and South Korea), are essential, in particular if they lead to
a PRC-US code of conduct to guard against further incidents at sea that might result in an exchange of fire.

At the height of the US-USSR Cold War, both countries took steps to ensure
that the competition never again reached the stage of a nuclear showdown
such as occurred over Cuba. Today, US-China relations are far more developed at
every level Tracks I, II, and III than was ever the case between Washington and
Moscow. Nor have US-China relations reached the stage of an expensive and
dangerous arms race such as bankrupted the USSR and permanently unbalanced the
US budget. Both countries leaders need to stay focused on the importance of the relationship while
opportunities still exist to sustain deep cooperation on common interests, such as restraining North Koreas
and Irans nuclear ambitions, keeping the South China and East China Seas disputes from turning violent,
working together on peacekeeping missions and humanitarian assistance, and agreeing to meaningful
targets on carbon emissions before climate change becomes irreversible.

Useful offcase shyt

DA US Politics

Agenda Link
Plan will require political capital
Keatley, 15 --- former editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal and the South
China Morning Post of Hong Kong (4/18/15, Robert, China's AIIB Challenge:
How Should America Respond? http://nationalinterest.org/feature/americasbig-strategic-blunder-not-joining-chinas-aiib-12666, downloaded 4/23/16, JMP)
Washingtons next move is unclear. To join would require a capital
commitment , something a Republican Congress is unlikely to provide even if
President Obama asks. After all, the AIIB was born partly because Congress
consistently has refused to authorize a larger voice for Beijing in international
agencies that the United States dominates, which would give China a role
reflecting its new economic strength. For example, for five years it has
ignored legislation authorizing a cost-free (to U.S. taxpayers) revision of
International Monetary Fund quotas despite administration urging. Even so,
the administration should swallow its pride and explore the possibility of
getting inside the tent, perhaps with Japan, rather than remain a lonely
outsider. On the positive side, Jim Yong Kim, the American who leads the
World Bank, already plans talks about future cooperation with the AIIB.

--- 2nc Agenda Link Block

Plan is massively unpopular with congress
Lobe, 15 --- The Washington Bureau Chief of the international news agency,
Inter Press Service (3/23/15, Jim, Washington Misses Bigger Picture of New
Chinese Investment Bank, http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-missesbigger-picture-of-new-chinese-investment-bank/5438132, article downloaded
5/3/16, JMP)
Indeed, commentators are depicting US allies decision to join the AIIB (see
here, here, and here as examples) as a debacle for U.S. diplomacy. The Wall
Street Journal editorial board has predictably blamed Obama for defeat,
calling it a case study in declining American influence (although it also
defended Washingtons decision against joining and accused Britain of
appeasing China for commercial purposes.)
What the Journal predictably didnt mention was a key reason why the
administration did not seek membership in the new bank: there was virtually
no chance that a Republican-dominated Congress would approve it . Indeed,
one reason Beijing launched its initiative and so many of our allies in both
Asia and Europe have decided to join is their frustration with Republicans in
Congress who have refused to ratify a major reform package designed to give
developing countries, including China, a little more voting power on the
Western-dominated governing boards of the IMF and the World Bank. The
Group of 20 (G20) biggest economic powers actually proposed this reform in
2010, and it doesnt even reduce Washingtons voting power, which gives it
an effective veto over major policy changes in both institutions. As a result of
this intransigence, the United States is the only G-20 member that has failed
to ratify the reforms, effectively blocking their implementation. As noted by a
New York Times editorial Friday,
Congress bears considerable blame for refusing to pass legislation to shift
voting power more fairly among IMF member states, including China. Chinas
move to create the new development bank is part of the price being paid for
that obstruction.
Indeed, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made this point implicitly in testimony
this week in which he also restated U.S. reservations about the AIIB:
Our continued failure to approve the IMF quota and governance reforms is
causing other countries, including some of our allies, to question our
commitment to the IMF and other multilateral institutions that we worked to
create and that advance important US and global economic and security
interests.

The IMF reforms will help convince emerging economies to remain

anchored in the multilateral system that the United States helped design and
continues to lead.
Now, of course, China would probably have created the AIIB on its own even if
the Congress had ratified the IMF package. But the repeated congressional
refusal to do so gave the Europeans (who have supported the reforms despite
the fact that they would lose the most voting power if the reforms were
implemented) and other U.S. allies an additional reason to join up. And none
of this absolves the Obama administration of its own diplomatic failure in
persuading its allies to hold back. Or the administration might have tried a
different strategy: joining the Bank and then trying to get Congress on board.
Surprisingly, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the upper chambers new
neoconservative heartthrob, told an audience at the Hudson Institute this
past week that it would have been better for the U.S. to sign up so as to gain
some influence over the Banks operations and policies. (However, one of
Cottons reported sugar-daddies, Sheldon Adelson, has always been loathe to
alienate Beijings leaders for fear they could interfere with his lucrative casino
interests in Macao.) After all, as more than one commentator has noted, the
Obama administration has long argued that Beijing should assume a
leadership role in global affairs commensurate with its wealth and geostrategic importance.
Given all the negative commentary by Asia and development specialists, its
still possible that Obama may reconsider U.S. opposition to membership
before the March 31 deadline, as suggested by Elizabeth Economy of the
Council on Foreign Relations and others.
But the main point here is that official Washingtonincluding Republicans in
Congress and the mainstream media is not paying adequate attention to
major shifts in the global order and how isolated the United States has
become vis--vis the international community, especially its most important
allies. Still stuck shoulder-deep in the Middle East, the vaunted pivot to the
Pacific looks increasingly hollow, especially with a Republican Congress
agitating to dig us in even deeper by, for example, sticking slavishly by a
Netanyahu-led Israel and trying to sabotage an Iran deal. Active Republican
resistance to even modest moves advocated by the administration on global
warming is also harming our credibility with allies, as well as others, as it has
since George W. Bush renounced the Kyoto Protocol. One could go on and on.
Its very difficult to exercise global leadership when youve isolated yourself
from the rest of the world and fail to take account of how much the world has
changed from that much-cherished unipolar moment.

The plan will be a huge fight in Congress

Rafferty, 15 --- managing editor of the World Bank in Washington 1997-99
(Kevin, U.S. forfeiting its leadership in global finance to China,

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/03/23/commentary/worldcommentary/u-s-forfeiting-its-leadership-in-global-finance-to-china/#.VzPHJSGPD-, article downloaded 5/11/16, JMP)

Although nominally welcoming any new bank that would finance
infrastructure development, Washington questioned whether a Chinese-led
bank headquartered in Beijing and with China owning as much as 49 percent
of the shares would be open or transparent or follow international best
practices.
America fears the bank will promote Chinese political, economic and
commercial purposes, even though Beijing has persistently promised that the
AIIB would be open, inclusive, transparent and responsible.
In being the first European to defect from U.S. leadership, George Osborne
also claimed that the U.K. wanted to join to ensure that the AIIB was ethical,
transparent and efficient. This was received skeptically in China, with one
blogger claiming that Britain was Washingtons thug for hire.
Chinas decision to break with the so-called Washington consensus and set up
its own infrastructure bank also puts the established Bretton Woods
institutions in a bad light, although Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, has
pleaded and begged with the U.S. Congress to pass the 2010 agreement on
shareholdings. She endorsed the AIIB and pledged that the IMF would
cooperate with it.
Leaders of the World Bank and ADB have been more muted and said that
there are plenty of infrastructure projects to go round. Both the Washington
and the Manila banks have moved away from big infrastructure projects that
used to be their wherewithal, and instead emphasize softer targets like Our
Mission is to combat poverty.
Japan has been caught off guard. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga this
month tried to pour cold water on the project, asking whether AIIB would be
able to ensure fair governance or lend for sustainable projects. Given that the
U.K., Germany and France have decided to climb aboard the AIIB, should
Japan now join to influence the bank from within and not be left out of Chinas
infrastructure express?
Finance Minister Taro Aso raised the possibility of Japan joining if conditions
are right, but Tokyo should be asking if its jealous determination to cling to
the ADB presidency was a factor in persuading China to set up its own bank
rather than channel funds through the ADB.
The biggest questions remain for Washington. Congress is to blame for failing
to approve plans to give Beijing a bigger role in international financial
institutions. Belatedly, some experts at Washington think tanks have
recognized that AIIB is on its way to being a reality and suggested that the
U.S. should eat humble pie and apply to join. However, opposition in
Congress makes this a nonstarter .

Membership in AIIB will require political fight

Runde, et. al, 15 --- director of the Project on Prosperity and Development
and holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS (3/20/15,
Daniel Runde is director of the Project on Prosperity and Development and
holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS. Matthew P.
Goodman is the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy and senior
adviser for Asian economics at CSIS. Conor Savoy, deputy director of the
Project on Prosperity and Development, and Amy J. Studdart, deputy director
of the Simon Chair in Political Economy, also contributed, The Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://csis.org/publication/asianinfrastructure-investment-bank, article downloaded 4/23/16, JMP)
Q5: Will the U.S. join the bank? How do we go forward from here?
A5: U.S. engagement is needed, but is unlikely to come in the form of bank
membership. U.S. membership would need to be approved by Congress and,
as has been demonstrated by the refusal to pass IMF reform, there is little
sympathy on the Hill for any move that would, or would appear to, cede
influence to China especially at great financial cost to the United States.
The U.S. government could support the bank by sending experts and advisors
to help inform governance structures and standards. It can also work with its
allies who have since joined the bank to use their influence to ensure that the
AIIB adheres to best practices.

Congressional opposition despite strategic benefits --TPP proves

Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.
Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
Finally, as former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others have
argued,24 the Obama administration may have been constrained by the U.S.
Congress. There is no evidence that members of Congress expressed any
interest, positive or negative, in Chinas AIIB proposal. However, Congress is
not only responsible for authorizing U.S. contributions to MDBs and other
international financial institutions but must also approve any changes to the
governance and structure of MDBs. It is noteworthy that, even as China was
pledging tens of billions of dollars to stand up AIIB, the U.S. Treasury has
struggled to get Congress to meet the U.S. commitments to ADB and the
Asian Development Fund (ADF), which makes concessional loans for poverty
alleviation. U.S. arrears to ADF totaled $326.7 million at the end of FY2014
and could eventually affect the U.S. share in the fund.25

In light of Congresss inability to fund existing commitments to Asian

development assistance, the Obama administration may have been unable to
offer concrete proposals to counter AIIB for example, by reforming shares at
ADB or increasing the banks support for infrastructure lending. For the same
reason, U.S. membership in AIIB is unthinkable for the foreseeable future ,
despite the decision by U.S. allies to join the bank. As the prolonged debate
over Trade Promotion Authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in
Congress suggested, while individual members of Congress from both parties
recognize that Congress has an important role to play in ensuring that the
United States has the resources with which to exercise leadership in Asia,
Congress as an institution struggles to make decisions that advance the
strategic interests of the United States.

Treasury Department Opposes

Treasury Department drove U.S. opposition to the AIIB
Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.
Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
Policymakers may have also reacted defensively in part because they had
limited information about Chinas plans for AIIB, which China was slow to
provide. Had China been more deliberate in its rollout proposal and reached
out to the United States earlier in the process, it might have forestalled some
of the acrimony with which the Obama administration greeted the proposal. It
was only in September 2014 that Jin Liqun, the incoming AIIB president,
visited Washington to reassure U.S. experts and officials that China was trying
to address criticisms about the banks structure, well after the United States
had decided to lobby allies not to join the organization. Additionally, the U.S.
international economic policymaking apparatus may have predisposed the
U.S. government towards a defensive reaction to Chinas proposal. The
Treasury Department and Treasury officials working at the NSC dominated
the U.S. governments formulation of a response. The Treasury view was
heavily influenced by a belief in the sanctity of the Bretton Woods
institutions, including MDBs like ADB, and as a result, it instinctively sought to
uphold the primacy of the incumbent institutions when confronted with a
challenge.
U.S. economic policymakers reacted similarly in 1997, when, in the midst of
the Asian financial crisis, Japan argued for the creation of an Asian Monetary
Fund (AMF) that would provide an Asia-led response to balance of payments
crises. Indeed, the arguments made by U.S. Treasury officials against Japans
AMF proposal in 1997 were similar to the arguments U.S. officials would later
make in 2014 against AIIB. They stressed that an AMF would duplicate the
function of existing institutions; they argued that it would have lower
standards than existing institutions (in this case that its lending would lack
conditionality, the requirement that borrowers implement structural reforms);
and they argued that it was a Trojan horse by which a regional power sought
to marginalize the United States and claim hegemony for itself.22
Participants in the debate over AIIB suggest that there were officials in
Treasurys Office of International Affairs who welcomed Chinas determination
to contribute to solving a regional problem, but who argued for a more
nuanced response, believing the United States should have laid out its
concerns publicly, early in the process. However, the debate was dominated
by a small number of players , and officials advocating for a more subtle

response, whether at the Treasury Department, the NSC or the State

Department, struggled to push the administration in this direction. The State
Departments Economic and Business Affairs and East Asia and Pacific
Bureaus, which may have wanted to ensure that the administrations
response was consistent with the broader goals of the rebalance strategy,
played, at best, a marginal role in formulating policy. Some observers have
suggested that the Treasury view prevailed, in part because the NSC has
expanded in size according to David Rothkopf, CEO and editor of The FP
Group, it now has nearly 400 people, twice as large as during the early Bush
years23 limiting its ability to craft an approach that defends global
standards for multilateral institutions while still accommodating a greater role
for China in global economic governance.

yesElections Link
The plan is unpopular --- over half of the public sees
Chinas rise as a threat
Westcott, 5/6/16 (Ben, Half of Americans still see Chinas rise as threat,
survey suggests; Majority also think US should be worlds sole military
superpower, according to poll, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacydefence/article/1941667/half-americans-still-see-chinas-rise-threat-survey,
article downloaded 6/4/16, JMP)
Half of Americans still believe Chinas emergence as a world power is a major
threat to the United States, according to a new survey released by the Pew
Research Centre on Friday.
But Islamic State, refugees fleeing from Iraq and Syria and climate change
were all ranked as more worrying in the survey, which polled more than 4,000
United States citizens.
In the latest of a series of surveys published by Pew, attitudes towards China
remain negative but stable as tensions in the South China Sea continue to pit
the two superpowers against each other.
Youre talking about people in a country thats used to being number one,
that like to be number one and Chinas clearly challenging that number one
position, said David Zweig, an expert on China and international relations at
the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
About 55 per cent of United States citizens interviewed in the survey said
they wanted the United States to remain the sole military superpower in the
world, including 67 per cent of Republican voters.
In addition, almost a quarter of interviewees said they saw China as an
adversary to the United States, the same number as Russia. Both numbers
havent changed much in recent years, according to Pew.
Zweig said a quarter of Americans seeing China as an adversary wasnt
unsurprising, but it could be a problem in the future.
Its a problem when people tend not to trust each other, when they see
negatives even when there arent necessarily negatives, he said.
I think that Chinese clearly believe America wants to contain Chinas rise ...
and if you ask a lot of Americans they see China as a bully, as a threat.
Zweig said that according to previous Pew surveys, attitudes to China in the
United States had started to sour in 2012 following territorial tensions in the
South China Sea and President Xi Jinping taking office.

The Pew survey was conducted between April 4 and 19 this year.
Fifty per cent of respondents said Chinas emergence as a world power was a
major threat, 80 per cent cited Islamic State as a major fear and 55 per cent
said they were threatened by the number of refugees leaving Syria and Iraq.

Plan unpopular Washington perceives AIIB as

undermining American dominance plan is spun as a loss
of US leadership
Mitra 15 [Mili, staff writer, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: Signaling
a New World Order?, Brown Political Review, 4/4/15,
http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2015/04/asian-infrastructure-investmentbank-signaling-a-new-world-order/] MG
The latest wedge in Sino-American relations is not Chinas support of North
Korea or its alleged cyber warfare tactics, but instead the creation of a new
economic institution: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Despite
its innocuous name, the AIIB has been contentious from its conception,
polarizing governments while strengthening Chinas global influence.
The idea of the AIIB bank originated in October 2013, during an annual AsiaPacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum. The plan has since developed
and expanded; the AIIB now has a fund of $50 billion to invest in Asia.
Ostensibly, the Chinese government proposed the bank to simply improve
infrastructure throughout the region. The continent is in dire need of funding
to sustain its economic growth, and the bank has been presented as a means
of maintaining such necessary investment. Chinas long-term strategy,
however, is more nuanced: Many analysts have alleged that Chinas actions
stem from a desire to undermine American dominance in the world order and
replace it with a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia.
The AIIB, along with the BRICS New Development Bank, is considered a
threat to American influence because it has been established to operate in
the same sphere as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank,
two intergovernmental organizations dominated by American funding. These
Bretton Woods Institutions, as they are generally known, have directed global
economic development since their founding in 1944 at the close of World War
II. The World Bank was created to finance economic development, initially
managing the reconstruction of Europe after the war. The IMF, on the other
hand, provides oversight to member nations monetary and exchange rate
policies. It was created to bring a measure of stability to global exchange
rates, an important facet of international trade.
The Bretton Woods Institutions have long been established as key players in
global economic policy. However, they have also been criticized for promoting
Western or American interests at the expense of emerging markets. The
United States is the World Banks single largest donor and has the highest
voting power in the IMF. As a result, the US government has great leverage in

both institutions. Chinas bid to create a parallel fund will provide an

alternative source of funding for developing countries and thus undercut
American soft power.
Although the AIIB is by definition a potential competitor to the World Bank
and IMF, a rivalry of sorts has been created by the reactions of the US
government. The Obama administration has long opposed the formation of
the bank . While American officials have not openly lobbied against it, they
have attempted to subtly pressure other governments into steering clear of
the Chinese initiative. When Britain decided to join the AIIB in February, a
senior official publicly criticized them for their constant accommodation of
China. This statement led to further embarrassment when other nations
began to join the bank.

--- 2nc Elections Link Block

Plan would be unpopular --- public and Congress doesnt
want U.S. to be perceived as giving up leadership
Wenfeng, 15 --- Associate Professor at the China Institutes of
Contemporary International Relations (3/31/15, Wang, America Needs More
Domestic Consensus on Issues in the International System,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/finance-economy/america-needs-moredomestic-consensus-on-issues-in-the-international-system/, article
downloaded on 6/3/16, JMP)
However, it is widely accepted that America has its own problem when
interacting with the world. U.S. foreign policy has always been frustrated by
isolationism, self-centeredness, and ignorance of the change in the world.
Congress, as a branch of the U.S. government, is more likely to be seen as a
representative of this kind of sentiment. From a historical perspective, the
refusal of IMF reform is definitely not an isolated case of the U.S. Congress
tarnishing the countrys leadership on the international stage. As early as the
end of WW I, U.S. Senate refused to ratify the agreement President Wilson
negotiated with European powers and America lost the opportunity to play a
leading role in world politics for the first time in history by not joining the
League of Nations. Even in the second half of the twentieth century when the
U.S. was in its heydays of world leadership, Congress didnt stop playing a
negative role to interrupt the countrys international behavior. For example,
people like Jesse Helms, the longtime Chairman of U.S. Senate Committee of
Foreign Relations, were so hostile to the United Nations, the most important
international organization in modern world, that they threatened to cut U.S.
funding
So what we see today is, on the one hand, the Obama administration clearly
understands the urgency for the U.S. to be more active in creating, shaping
and reforming the international system and international mechanisms, and
they are working very hard, pushing Americas allies and partners to follow
suit. Deep thinkers like Henry Kissinger are reminding people of the profound
changes in the world order and the importance for America to take the lead.
On the other hand, a strong domestic consensus in still not in place, and
because of obstacles in its political system, America just cannot act in an
efficient way.
Liberal scholars who believe the role of international institutions and
economic interdependence like G. John Ikenberry have long argued that a
world system made by America and supports the values of America will work
even if America itself is no longer in the drivers seat and countries like China
take that position, so long as the rules dont change. Obviously, for America
as a country, this is a hard sell. It is still very difficult for Americans, both
those who support Americas engagement with the world and those who

dont care so much about the countrys relations with the international
system, to imagine a world in which others take the leadership is in Americas
own interest. For many Americans, represented by members of U.S.
Congress, it is the most important thing that America stays as the leader ,
whether the system and the institutions truly represent those idealistic values
doesnt matter so much, or, only America can hold those values and
principles while others just cannot. America still has time to develop the
consensus and the wisdom necessary to strike a balance between Americas
leadership in the international system and the demand of others to have
enough space not only to survive in the system but also to prosper. As they
prosper, their voices will be heard and their interest will be considered. For
the international system created by America to survive the tremendous
change the world is undergoing, others need to be assured that they also
have the opportunities in it and they have something to offer, and America
still has a lot of homework to do.

yesDA Chinese Politics

Xi Good links
An AIIB that excludes the US is perceived by China as
critical to Xis Chinese Dream
---part of this card makes the argument that the infl uq of other developed
economies into the AIIB will diminish Chinas influence --- in the context of the
DA thats not relevant b/c its all about posturing against US lead --- it can be
spun that the Chinese public will see these developed economies as
abandoning the US and instead aligning with China, which would prove
Chinas rising influence
EAF, 15 East Asia Forum (Chinas Credibility and Influence Risk in the
Success of the AIIB, 4/27/15,
http://www.economywatch.com/features/Chinas-Credibility-and-InfluenceRisk-in-the-Success-of-the-AIIB.04-27-15.html, //11)
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has become part of Xi
Jinpings Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. The United States failure
to block other developed economies from joining the AIIB seems to have
brought this part of the Chinese dream closer to its realisation. But it is way
too early to celebrate. A bigger AIIB does not necessarily mean a better one.
Beijing must prepare to play an institutional game with other members inside
the AIIB.
More members especially from developed countries will dilute Chinas
influence inside the AIIB. China originally held 49 percent of total capital,
making its leadership undisputable. As more developed economies join as
founding members, Chinas total capital share will decrease. This opens up
the challenge of institutional balancing.
Institutional balancing refers to the diplomatic strategies that allow states to
rely on institutions to constrain other members power and influence. There
are two types of institutional balancing: exclusive institutional balancing and
inclusive institutional balancing. The former refers to excluding a target state
from the designated institution, and using institutional unity to alienate and
pressure the target state. The latter refers to including the target state in the
institution, but using the institutions rules and norms to constrain and shape
its behaviour.
The AIIB can be Chinas exclusive institutional balancing strategy against the
United States. The success of the AIIB might not mean the end of US
leadership but it will definitely steal the United States thunder in the global
financial system. But China will face inclusive institutional balancing efforts
from other countries, especially the UK, Germany, France and Australia.

Xis influence is linked to CCP success --- the plan is seen

as appeasing China which consolidates Xis power
Jian, 5/13/16 writer for the Bangkok Post (Ma, Bangkok Post, Xi strives to
secure Mao-style authority,
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/971225/xi-strives-to-securemao-style-authority, //11)
Mr Xi knows that he can succeed only by reinforcing the Party's authority ,
and his position as its leader. So he has presented the narrative that there is
a threat to China from within -- a threat posed by treacherous and corrupt
leaders -- and has declared Party loyalty to be of paramount importance.
There are only two types of people: Those who support the Party and those
who do not. Like Mao in 1966, Mr Xi believes the power hinges on making all
Chinese -- government officials and ordinary citizens alike loyal and
obedient through any means. Power is founded on the repression of
opponents, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and the tens of
thousands of other jailed authors and scholars.
But Mr Xi is not counting on fear along to cement his rule. He is also
attempting to win popular support with a new unifying ideology, based on
the so-called China Dream , a set of socialist values and goals that are
supposed to bring about the great renewal of the Chinese nation. This has
been accompanied by a galvanizing form of nationalism that portrays the
world, particularly the US, as seeking to keep China from assuming its rightful
place atop the international order. And he has nurtured a personality cult of a
kind not seen since Mao.

*******L US-China Engagement******

Xis inner circle opposes US involvement
Wong, 15 Edward Wong is an American journalist and a foreign
correspondent for The New York Times. Wong served as one of the Times'
main correspondents covering the Iraq War from November 2003 through
June 2007 [Xi Jinpings Inner Circle Offers Cold Shoulder to Western
Officials , The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-presidentinner-circle-western-officials.html]//Yak
President Xi Jinping made his first state visit to the United States , including a
Wang was among a small
group of advisers at his side.
As

day of pageantry and diplomacy at the White House on Friday, Mr.

A member of the Communist Partys elite Politburo, Mr. Wang, 59, studied American society as a politics
professor in Shanghai and an adviser to Mr. Xis two predecessors. In the process, he got to know American
scholars and officials.

people who knew Mr. Wang back then say he has become unapproachable
and ignores invitations for conversations. American officials find it difficult to
talk to him casually on the sidelines of international forums .
Yet,

They and other Western officials say that this icy remove is true not only of
Mr. Wang, but also of other advisers with whom Mr. Xi travels, including Li
Zhanshu, essentially Mr. Xis chief of staff, and Liu He, his top economic
adviser.
The problem presents a huge challenge for the United States and other nations. By some standards, Mr.
Xis administration is the most secretive in 66 years of Communist rule.
In past decades, foreign officials could speak with senior Chinese officials or aides and trust that those
people were proxies for their leaders. The most famous example is Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier under
Mao, with whom Henry A. Kissinger secretly negotiated the United States-China rapprochement.
With Mr. Xi, those channels do not exist.
One of the problems we have in U.S.-China relations now is that we basically dont know these people,
said David M. Lampton, director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies. I dont think we have a very good understanding of who below Xi Jinping speaks for him.

The refusal of Mr. Xis inner circle to develop ties with Western officials is
consistent with a fundamental belief that has become widespread in the
system here namely that Western ideas and influences will undermine the
Communist Party and lead to a color revolution.
If the party thinks its besieged by external and internal forces, the natural human reaction is to bring
your organization more tightly together to reduce the flow of information to the outside, Mr. Lampton said.

There is also broad agreement that Mr. Xi keeps colleagues and advisers
especially technocrats in state ministries at more of a distance than other
Chinese leaders did and that he relies mainly on his own knowledge and instincts in making
decisions.

He is the head of seven of 22 leading small groups, opaque policy councils

that weigh in on matters ranging from economics to cybersecurity. And he
created the National Security Commission, another secretive group that aims
to coordinate security policy to defend the party against internal and external
threats.
Were seeing something new with Xi, said John Delury, an author of Wealth and Power, a book on
modern Chinese history. Never

has the gap been bigger between No. 1 and

everyone else.

Engagement link --- must balance excluding western

values and engagement --- key to CCP stability
Denyer 15 --- the Washington Post, (Simon Denyer, 3-6-2015, "How Xi
Jinpings presidency was shaped by traumas of Mao and Gorbachev"
Guardian, 6-25-2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/xijinping-china-reform-gorbachev-mao)//jonah
**we dont endorse this piece of evidences gendered language

To mark Chinas Spring Festival last month, Xi Jinping made a visit to the small northern village of Liangjiahe, where he
was banished in 1969 as a raw 15-year-old during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, where he worked for seven years
and where the future president of China joined the Communist party. His father had been persecuted and jailed in one of
Mao Zedongs purges, and Xi suffered humiliation, hunger and homelessness, sleeping in a cave, carrying manure and
building roads, according to official accounts. Perplexed when he was sent to the countryside, Xi emerged as if
remoulded by the painful years he spent there. He learned enough in the village to be able to cast himself as a man of the
people. The lessons also made him profoundly distrust those same people. Xi told villagers that he had left his heart in
Liangjiahe, but it was clear that the experience has stayed with him in ways both spoken and unspoken, and has helped
shape the sort of president he has become possibly the strongest Chinese leader since Mao. In September,

Xi will pay a

ruthlessly centralized power while

embarking on an ambitious project to revitalize Communist rule and to
secure the partys future. He is also a president whose worldview , and vision
for China, were shaped by two historic traumas . The first was the trauma of the Cultural
state visit to the United States, as a president who has

Revolution, when Mao used the people to tear his own party to shreds, and Xi was caught up in the chaos. The second was
the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, as the public was invited to rise up and

For if Xi casts himself as the man to save

the Communist party from its demons, he is also a man obsessively
determined to retain full control of any reform process, in ways that Mao and Gorbachev
the Communist party there was consigned to oblivion.

did not do. Advertisement The twin traumas help explain why he wont allow the people to drive any process of change.
His determination to crack down on corruption, for example, is matched by an equal resolve to exclude the public from
participating in that campaign, lest the forces he unleashes spin out of control. The combination of that domestic trauma,

two traumas, one

domestic and one foreign , have really shaped him , said Roderick MacFarquhar, a leading
expert in Chinese politics at Harvard University. He has seen what happens if you allow too
much criticism of the party and the establishment . Gorbachev and Mao both struggled
against opposition and factionalism within their own parties, although they pursued far different remedies. Xi is
determined to consolidate power and eliminate rivals. He has experienced
firsthand the chaos that ensues when the party disintegrates, and that helps
explain his desire to reinvigorate the C hinese C ommunist p arty and reassert
its primacy . One of his major themes is a war on western values , including
a free press, democracy and the constitutional separation of powers, all of
which he believes pose an insidious threat to one-party rule . In this and in the growing
ideological controls on sectors ranging from the news media to the military, Xi is resisting forces that he
thinks brought the Soviet regime to its knees . Paradoxically, though, he also has seen the
dangers of international isolation and an inward focus, factors that helped weaken Maos China and the Soviet Union .
That paradox, between reform and opening on the one hand and excluding
western values on the other, has created an unresolved tension in his
presidency . Cheng Enfu, the director of the Institute of Marxism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
predicted that the presidents efforts to combat this infiltration of western values
could become as intense as his anti-corruption campaign. Advertisement Xi considers himself the
antithesis of the weak [person] man who turned out the light on the Soviet empire. Proportionally,
experienced as a young person, and the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union, those

the Soviet Communist party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist, Xi
reportedly said in an important speech shortly after taking over leadership of the Communist party in late 2012. Today,

Xi

presents himself as a down-to-earth leader who rolled up his sleeves and

learned the hard way during those years working with peasants in the
countryside. In that sense, he casts himself as a worthy successor to Mao. But, although he would never admit it,
he has learned from Maos mistakes as well. While Maos Cultural Revolution almost destroyed China, Xis war on
corruption is a masterpiece in controlled destruction. More than 100,000 party members have been disciplined since the
campaign began, but through a process that is entirely managed from within the party. The public is simply not invited to
join in, while anti-corruption activists have received long prison sentences. There are to be no mass denunciations of
corrupt and arrogant officials, because Xi remembers only too well where that path leads. He

needs to fully

control the anti-corruption movement, because they are afraid that the participation of the
public will lead to another cultural revolution and bring more chaos , historian
Zhang Lifan said. The Soviet collapse blamed in part in China on corruption still haunts the
C hinese C ommunist p arty, said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George
Washington University. An entire industry has grown up to pore over the reasons for the collapse and ask what lessons can
be drawn from it. Initially, China mostly faulted Gorbachev himself as a weak and foolish leader. But in the years that

Chinese party scholars eventually pegged the Soviet

collapse on the rot within not only corruption but also economic and political stagnation and international
followed, Shambaugh says,

isolation. Gorbachev was stymied by opposition from within the Soviet bureaucracy; the strength of Xis anti-corruption

Xi also has tried to counter

the partys ideological loss of direction with a new narrative: that the party
should be proud of itself and have confidence in its historical right to rule . Mao,
campaign is that it reforms the party while asserting his supremacy over it.

consigned to the bookshelf of history since the era of Deng Xiaoping and Chinas great opening to the world, has to be
dusted off and revered again as the victor of the revolution and the unifier of the nation. Why did the Soviet Union
disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist party collapse? Xi asked in that December 2012 speech. Its a profound
lesson for us. To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and
to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the partys
organisations on all levels. The problem, MacFarquhar says, is that Xi has no coherent or convincing new ideology to
offer. He has got no positive weapon against the western infiltration of ideas, so he has to be negative about it, he said.
Its a tremendous contradiction he faces, to keep western ideas out while building a creative, technological and
developed society. Shambaugh said the Chinese Communist party used to believe that the Soviet Unions collapse meant
it had to adapt and reform, to become dynamic and responsive. But it began to abandon that strategy from 2008, as it
faced another series of small traumas: riots in Tibet and Xinjiang, popular uprisings, including the colour revolutions and
the Arab Spring, and internal dissent as the internet empowered citizens and intellectuals demanded democracy. Once
again, the conservatives dug in and laid their bets not on adaptation but on repression. Xi, Shambaugh said, has
intensified the repression begun under his predecessor, Hu Jintao. So when a new video series about the fall of the Soviet
Union became compulsory viewing for Communist party cadres in 2013, its focus was not on the flaws in the Soviet
system but once again on the sins of Gorbachev. Western

values played a leading role in the

failure of Gorbachevs reform effort, and the documentary aims to warn cadres not to
make the same mistake as Gorbachev , said Cheng. Gorbachev introduced
outside forces to help him to turn over the Soviet Communist party. Xi
believes the Communist party can self-correct . The party is able to hunt the
problem and fix it itself. Communist reform is controllable .

Xis power is rising, but any negatively perceived

confrontation with the US derails his agenda
Blackwill and Campbell, 16 (Robert D., senior fellow for U.S. foreign
policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, Kurt M., Former Assistant Secretary
of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, CEO of the Asia Group LLC., Xi
Jinping on the Global Stage: Chinese Foreign Policy Under a Powerful but
Exposed LeaderCouncil Special report No. 74, Feb 2016, Council of Foreign
Relations,//BR/)
The U.S.-China bilateral relationship is the most important in the world. No other two countries under

Xi Jinpings rise, his

dominance of Chinas policymaking process, and the increasing influence of
his domestic political concerns will have crucial consequences for the United
States and for American policies in Asia and beyond. Although Chinas relationship with
the United States has long been a priority for Chinese leaders, Xi has increasingly been willing
to test it and it occupies less of his attention than it did of his predecessors.
He has not only criticized U.S. alliances, questioned the role of nonAsian
foreseeable circumstances could disrupt the international system. Thus,

powers in Asian affairs, and built alternative institutional structures excluding

the United States, but has also continued Chinas rapid military
modernization even as the Chinese economy slows . As China asserts its vital national
interests, one of which is limiting the U.S. role in Asian affairs and related power projection capabilities,

Beijings positions on matters ranging from the U.S. alliance system in Asia,
to freedom of navigation, to human rights, to the territorial integrity of Japan,
to the rise of India, to the future of Taiwan will come into sustained tension
with U.S. national interests, policies, commitments, and values. Nevertheless,
Chinas growing geopolitical ambitions are tempered by the reality of its economic relationship with the

China will
continue to seek to expand its influence and in some instances will compete
directly with the United States, and Xi may criticize Washington to score
points at home, but bilateral economic interdependence will, in most cases,
provide a floor for the relationship. This is, of course, different from the longtime U.S.
United States and a variety of shared international interests between the two countries.

objective of constraining and ultimately moderating Chinese behavior by broadly integrating China into the
international system, a strategy that appears not to have substantially shaped Chinas more assertive
external policies. In sum,

Xi does not want to trigger a confrontation with the United

States, especially during a period of economic uncertainty in China.
Nevertheless, U.S. policymakers will likely face a growing challenge in Xi,
particularly because he can coordinate a variety of different instruments of
statecraft in service of enduring Chinese strategic objectives and to bolster
his nationalist credentials. By contrast, U.S. policymakers are burdened by a slower, more
divided, and more public interagency process. Xi will exploit the relative opacity and
speed of his system to keep U.S. officials off balance with new initiatives or
provocations. These Chinese advantages are serious, but they are not necessarily decisive, especially
if the United States remains resolved, strengthens its alliances, and forges a bipartisan domestic
consensus on Asia policy. To deal with Xis more assertive foreign and defense policies, the United States
should devise a grand strategy for Asia at least as coherent and coordinated as the one that has been
formulated in Beijing, which appears designed to maximize Chinas power while challenging the longstanding role of the United States in the region.49 What we have in mind is not containment, which in any
case is a U.S.-Soviet concept that has no relevant application in East Asia today. Instead, the United States
should use a variety of instruments of statecraft to incentivize China to commit to a rules-based order but
impose costs that are in excess of the gains Beijing would reap if it fails to do so. This American grand
strategy should account for the fact that the decades-long endeavor to integrate China into the global
order has not significantly tempered Chinas strategic objective to become the most powerful and
influential country in Asia. This being the case, the United States needs a long-term approach that
demonstrates U.S. internal strength, external resolve, and steadiness of policy.

China perceives any engagement as containmentangers

them because they feel like Junior Partners. Theyre busy
pushing their own Free Trade Agendas
Backer 14 Larry CatA Backer is Professor of Law at the Dickinson School of
Law at the Pennsylvania State University. Previously he served as Executive
Director of the Comparative and International Law Center at the University of
Tulsa. Larry Cat Backer, The Trans-Pacific Partnership: J pan, China, the U .S.,
and the Emerging Shape of a New World Trade Regulatory Or der , 13 W ash .
U. Global Stud . L. Rev . 049 (2014), http://ope nscholarship.wustl.edu/law_glo
balstudies/vol13/iss1/6 //LKJ

Indeed, Wen Jin Yuan notes the sense among Chinese academic and policy circles that the main reason behind the
Obama Administrations support for the TPP agenda is the USs desire to use the TPP as a tool to economically contain

Wen notes, for example, reports published in the Peoples Daily ,

the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, that refer to TPP as superficially
an economic agreement but contain[ing] an obvious political purpose to
constrain Chinas rise. 129 More importantly, a successfully negotiated TPP would result, according to other
Chinas rise. 128

Chinese scholars, in trade diversion to the detriment of Chinese economic interests. 130 Yet, according to Wens research,
United States officials insist that the ultimate goal of the United States was not containment, but incorporation. The
U.S.s ultimate goal is to integrate China into this regional trade system, rather than keeping China out, and the TPP
initiative is actually similar to the strategy led by several U.S. agencies to incorporate China into the WTO system. 131

incorporation can be understood from the Chinese side as another form of

containment . Rather than have China lead a new effort at refining the rules
and culture of trade in the Pacific, it would be forced to participate as a Junior
partner in a regulatory exercise directed by the United State s and its
principal ally, Japan. For the Chinese, the substantial effect might well be
understood as containment , though that view/perception is lost on the United States. 132 As a
consequence, Wen argues, Chinese policy will continue to push its own trade
agenda as a means of countering the perceived political and economic effects of TPP on its interests.
Yet

First among its strategies will be an acceleration of its efforts to secure free trade agreements with its neighbors. 133 To
the extent that these then hamper further TPP negotiations, all the better. 134 A possible consequence would be trade

as the United States and China fight for control of the

discourse of trade rules, with the objective measured by the participation of the Pacific Basins most
and regulatory system competition,

important economies. A March 21, 2013, report noted, Following Japans recent announcement that it will join in
negotiations of the US-led Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), the US and China are picking up the pace in
staking their claims on Asian economic territory. The US is encouraging South Korea to join in the TPP, which has
pressured China into spurring discussions of a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) between China, Japan, and South

China will accelerate the creation of its own enhanced free

trade area, one in which it will play the dominant role. China is also putting work into the
Korea. 135 More importantly,

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA), which would include not only China, Japan, and
South Korea but also the ten countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with India, Australia,
and New Zealand. 136 There is irony here: the Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA) is a
Japanese-led proposal for trade cooperation and free trade agreement among the sixteen present member countries of
the East Asia Summit.

Xi Bad link
The plan is perceived as a US concession --- that helps Xi
consolidate power
Economy, 14 C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations, author of By All Means Necessary: How Chinas
Resource Quest is Changing the World (Elizabeth, Lawfare, The Foreign
Policy Essay: The Fault Lines in Chinas New Empire, 9/9/14,
https://www.lawfareblog.com/foreign-policy-essay-fault-lines-chinas-newempire, //11)
It is too early to determine whether Xis efforts to construct a new Chinese
empire will be successful, but fault lines are already emerging. Pressures from
inside and outside China are shaping Chinas path forward in unexpected
ways, and Xis policies are creating deep pockets of discontent domestically.
He has announced, for example, that his anticorruption campaign is
encountering serious resistance. Even former top leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu
Jintao have warned Xi that if he continues to pursue his campaign so
aggressively, he risks undermining the party itself . In addition, his political
crackdown on the home front is alienating many of the best and brightest
Chinese citizens necessary to effect that change. According to Hurun Report,
almost two-thirds of Chinese with assets of $1.6 million or more have
emigrated or seek to emigrate. And, of course, Beijings White Paper on the
future of Hong Kong elections has precipitated widespread and ongoing
protests in Hong Kong that neither the Hong Kong government nor Beijing has
been able to tamp down. Even Xis bold economic reform planannounced to
great fanfare just one year agoappears to have run into difficulty. As one
prominent Chinese businessperson commented to me privately: The
property tax is delayed, currency reform is delayed, the Hong Kong-Shanghai
through train [a cross-border stock connection] is delayed, and approvals for
new business are being delayed. No one knows what is going on with the
economic reforms. Economic indicators are mostly pointing in the wrong
direction, and several Western analysts now predict a long, tough slog
forward with no guarantee of success. Xis desire to promote the centrality of
Chinaboth through physical and institutional infrastructure as well as soft
poweralso has encountered serious obstacles. Beijings efforts to enforce
various maritime and other territorial claims in the Asia Pacific have raised
tensions dramatically in the region, and rather than contributing to a shared
regional vision of Chinese leadership, they have led a number of countries,
including Vietnam, India, Japan, and Australia, to enhance their security
relationships with one another to hedge against China. Xis initiative to
establish an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was hurt (at least initially)
by the decision of most of the regions prominent economiesincluding
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Indonesianot to sign on. While the United
States apparently used its political leverage to influence some of these
countries to hold off on participation, there were also concerns within these

countries over the proposed banks governance, environmental, and labor

standards. Even Xis strong desire to promote Chinese soft power is
undermined by his very lack of understanding of what constitutes such
international influence. He insists, for example, that artists foster correct
viewpoints of history, nationality, and culture, as well as strengthen pride in
being Chinese. And even as he bemoans the lack of think tanks in China with
great influence and international reputation, he insists that they be led by
the Communist Party of China and adhere to correct direction. Such
directivesif enforcedvirtually guarantee that Chinese soft power will never
spread beyond the countrys boundaries.

Lack of U.S. Involvement = CCP Victory

AIIB is currently controlled by the CCP lack of U.S.
involvement is a major win for the party
Chow 16 [Daniel C.K, professor at University of Maryland, writes and
teaches about international business, trade, and Chinese law, Why China
Established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, Public Law and Legal
Theory Working, No. 333, 2/25/16, SSRN] MG
The AIIB as a Policy Tool for China
A. The State-Party and Control of the AIIB
The discussion in Part III above that the AIIB might serve as a counterweight
to the Washington Consensus assumes that China will dominate the AIIB in
the same or even more extreme ways that the United States and its allies
have dominated the World Bank and the IMF. The difference is that China will
use the AIIB to advance its own policy goals and not the policy goals of the
World Bank, the IMF, and the western values relating to the environment,
workers rights, transparency in governance, and non-corruption in
government. The use of the AIIB by the State-Party to further its own goals is
another formulation of the U.S. criticism that China will not follow best
practices in international lending, i.e. the Washington Consensus with its
western-laden values.
Whether the AIIB follows best practices as defined by Washington depends
in large part on whether the State-Party will be able to dominate the AIIB or
whether other countries can exercise enough control so that power is shared.
To analyze how power will be distributed in the AIIB, it is necessary to begin
by noting that China proposed the AIIB,192 is its largest contributor,193 holds
veto power,194 and that the permanent headquarters of the AIIB are located
in Beijing,195 the capital city of China and also the seat of the headquarters
of the Chinese government and the Communist Party.196 These facts alone
suggest that China will play a dominant role, but there are other factors at
play that reinforce the notion that the State-Party will ultimately control the
AIIB.
In China, the Party is able to control every important government or nongovernmental organization by installing its members in leadership
positions.197 For example, officials in the PRC government hold two
positions: a government position and a Party position that is always supreme
to the parallel position.198 The current President of the PRC is Xi Jinping.199
Xi holds the Presidency of the PRC, a government position, but this position is
largely ceremonial.200 He is also General Secretary of the Communist Party,
the highest position in the Party hierarchy.201 In addition to his other Party
positions, Xi is also chairman of the Partys Central Military Commission,
which controls Chinas Military, the Peoples Liberation Army.202 At some

points, the Party and the government merge. The best example is the Central
Military Commission, which is both a Party organ and a government bureau;
the members of each organ are identical.203 Xis Party positions, not his
government position as President are the true source of his power.204
By installing Party leaders in all leading government positions, the Party is
able to control the State.205 This same structure is repeated in state-owned
enterprises, business entities that are administrative units of the state.206 An
SOE has a corporate structure consisting of a CEO, a Vice CEO, Chief
Accounting Officer, and a Board of Directors similar to corporate structures in
firms outside of China.207 The Party structure includes a secretary of the
Party Committee, several Deputy Secretaries, and a Secretary of the Party
Discipline Inspection Committee (discipline is a surrogate for the harsher
sounding corruption).208 A similar structure exists within Universities. The
highest position in a University is not the President but the Party Secretary,
often translated as Provost to avoid causing concern to American partner
universities.209 A PRC law school has a dean, but also a Party Secretary who
is more powerful.210
The AIIBs President Jin Liqun is a former finance minister of China and is in all
likelihood a senior member of the Party. Although Jin has not trumpeted his
Party affiliations, all important positions in China are held by Party officials
and it is highly unlikely that Jin, a former finance minister, and hand picked by
the State-Party to head the AIIB is not a senior Party official.211 Of course,
Jins specific position within the elites of the Party is not publically known, a
factor that may be raised again in the discussion of transparency, a key World
Bank, IMF, and U.S. international trade condition. The powers of the AIIB are
vested in the Board of Governors, which consists of representatives from
each of the member states.212 The Board of Governors is required to meet
once annually.213 The AIIB Board of Governors can delegate the general
operational duties of the AIIB to the Board of Directors.214 The Board of
Directors consists of twelve directors elected by the Board of Governors.215
Unlike the World Bank and IMF, which have resident directors who live and
work in Washington, DC, the Board of Directors of the AIIB consists of nonresident directors.216 The AIIB Board of Directors will meet periodically
throughout the year,217 which has been interpreted by the AIIB to mean
quarterly meetings.218 The President of the AIIB will recommend one or more
vice presidents to the Board of Directors for approval.219 The rest of the
officers and staff of the AIIB shall be appointed by the President without
consultation.220
It should be apparent that the daily operations of the AIIB will be conducted
by the President, his management team, and his staff who will live in Beijing
and work at the AIIB headquarters on a daily basis. The directors of the AIIB
are non-resident directors who will live in their home countries. Contrast this
arrangement with that of the World Bank, which has resident directors who
meet Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday every week to conduct the daily
business of the World Bank.221 The directors of the World Bank are full time

employees while the directors of the AIIB will likely serve as directors on a
part time basis since they only meet once every three months. If the work of
the AIIB directors is similar to the work of directors of large business
corporations, the directors quarterly meetings will consists of reports by the
management and a casting of votes on issues that have been already
prepared for discussion by the management team, all handpicked by the
President. With the exception of the vice president, the board has no say in
the selection of the management and working staff of the AIIB. If the AIIB
follows the pattern of other important organizations in China under the
leadership of the Party, it seems highly likely that senior management will
also be Party members or approved by the Party. This suggests that the Party
through the President and his management team could control the day-today operations of the AIIB . The hand of the Party in running the AIIB seems
assured, given its control over all major governmental and non-governmental
organizations in China and given that the original idea for the AIIB came from
the Partys Central Committee, a group of senior Party leaders.222 The
control of the AIIB by the Party represents a first in history: control of a
prestigious multilateral institution that consists of all of the closest allies of
the United States but of which neither the United States nor Japan, Chinas

This is a
significant diplomatic and political achievement for the
State-Party and, at the same time, a setback and embarrassment for the
two largest competitors for influence in Asia, is a member .

United States.

Economic Collapse Turns U.S.-China Relations

Econ Collapse Turns Case --- Wrecks US-China Relations
Zhao 5/26/16--- Quansheng Zhao is Professor of International
Relations at American University School of International
Service and Chair of the AUs Asia Studies Research
Council(Future Directions for US-China Relations: An
Emerging Dual Leadership Structure, INSTITUTE FOR CHINAAMERICA STUDIES, http://chinaus-icas.org/materials/future-directions-uschina-relations-emerging-dual-leadership-structure/ ) JK
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the US-China relationship has taken on
a new structure, namely an emerging dual leadership structure, in the AsiaPacific. This trend represents the future direction of US-China relations. China,
as a rising power, has begun to play a leadership role in both the economic
and financial domains, which can be seen most recently in the development
of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Meanwhile, the
United States, as the existing hegemon, plays a leadership role in the security
and political domains. It remains to be seen whether the US and China can
extend this dual leadership structure into regional as well as global
institutions. Uncertainties about Order There are some inherent uncertainties
involved in these new developments. The emerging nature of this new type of
relationship means that the transitional process is still going on and the
situation has not yet stabilized. The fact that it is a dual-power structure, with
both sides having their own, sometimes different, viewpoints and opinions on
what should be done, also adds to this uncertainty. The dual leadership
structure reflects recent trends and perceptions regarding Chinas rise
namely Chinas dramatic and persistent economic growth (despite its recent
slowdown). This in turn may momentously affect global and regional power
distribution, giving Beijing considerable new leverage relative to the one
exercised by Washington. For example, Chinas increasing economic strength
helped to maintain economic stability in East Asia when the 2008 financial
crisis weakened the US. At the same time, continued US leadership in the
military and political domains may prove to play a balancing role vis--vis
Chinas rising influence in Asia and constitute a hindrance to Beijings
leadership in the East Asian region. No Bipolar or G2 Structure Will
Emerge Some realists envision a future bipolar structure in which the US and
China balance one another. However, the dual leadership structure is distinct
from this concept because it reflects fundamental asymmetry rather than
parity. China has not moved into a position where it can challenge US
leadership. Rather, China is merely starting to become more influential in the
economic dimension. While this trend could eventually enhance Beijings
power in the military and political dimensions, the transition from economic
to political influence will occur over a long period of time and is difficult to
measure. Therefore, it is unlikely that China will replace US leadership in

either the security or political domains any time sooneither in global or

regional affairs. Furthermore, the dual leadership structure may appear
similar to the G2 and other shared leadership concepts. They are, however,
conceptually and empirically different. In 2009, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued
strongly for the G2 model, suggesting that the relationship between the US
and China has to be truly a comprehensive global partnership, parallel [to]
relations with Europe and Japan. In contrast, the dual leadership concept
only refers to a newly emerged regional structure in East Asia and
emphasizes the distinct strengths of the US and China in separate
dimensions, namely, economic and military. In a global sense, it is still an
asymmetrical structure that is, the US remains the sole hegemon and China
is far from replacing it. This dual leadership has proven to be a positive
development so far, with benefits for both the US and China. Examples of
these benefits include US-China cooperation in dealing with such global
issues as climate change, anti-terrorism, or preventing the next financial
crisis, as well as the North Korean nuclear crisis. However, it remains to be
seen whether the two powers can coordinate well with other powers in the
region, such as Japan. The nature of the dual leadership structure can also be
viewed in different ways. One way to examine the issue is in terms of
perceptions. We do see that the gap between the US and China in many
dimensions is narrowing, such as in overall GDP, with many projecting that
the latter will surpass the former sooner or later. In sum, as Chinas global
influence and soft power continues to rise, as well as its overall GDP, the
perception may be that China is moving up while America is moving down.
Another angle from which to see the development is that China may become
a world superpower in certain dimensions, such as economically, but it is
unlikely for China to become the leading power in the military and political
domains. In fact, the dual leadership concept is double-edged. It not only
emphasizes Chinas rise and its implications, but the strength and persistence
of US leadership. Despite the origins of the global financial crisis in Wall
Street and the loss of American credibility in Afghanistan and Iraq, there have
been no real challenges to US hard and soft power in the world. That is why
we are witnessing the interesting phenomenon of Chinas continuing
economic momentum through three decades, while the US continues to hold
the leading military and political position. The region and the world are
therefore at a compelling historical moment that demands further empirical
data and suggests the necessity of new theoretical constructs. Containment
vs. Engagement Looking forward, there are at least two important questions
which relate to the reactions of key players to this dual leadership structure.
The first question is whether the US would accept a dual leadership structure
in East Asia. Needless to say, there is a constant chorus of opposing voices in
the US arguing about how to deal with the rise of China. A classic example is
the debate between advocates of a containment policy versus an
engagement policy. It seems to this author that the majority view among
American elites and policymakers is that the United States should do its
utmost to bring China into existing international political and economic
systems, making China an insider rather than a challenger. In this way, China

and the US would not only avoid a most undesirable and catastrophic military
confrontation (such as a dispute in the East China Sea or South China Seas),
but also achieve win-win cooperation in dealing with regional and global
issues, such as a nuclear North Korea, terrorism, and global environmental
challenges. Other Regional Players The second important question relates to
the reaction of existing players to a dual leadership structure, such as Japan,
Russia, the two Koreas. One must also pay attention to the question of how
we should treat the existing multilateral institutional arrangements such as
ASEAN plus Three, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, and
most recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It is true that Chinas Asian
neighbors have some concerns about the rise of China, particularly in the
security dimension. Much of this has to do with difficult conflicts and
territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. But at the
same time, China has made major progress in the past decade in the region,
establishing close economic ties with virtually every neighboring country as
well as initiating its own financial institutions such as the AIIB. The positive
manifestation of increasing Chinese influence in the economic dimensions
became particularly clear in the US financial crisis of 2008, when Chinas
record high economic growth offset the USs negative growth, playing thereby
a stabilizing and beneficial economic role for ASEAN countries. On the other
hand, it is still unclear whether or how China will be a part of the TPP process
in the foreseeable future, which indicates that there are still real limitations in
terms of Chinas leadership role. The Future Balance of Power There are
several uncertain factors that will affect the future balance of power in the
Asia-Pacific region. Prospects for Chinas continued rapid economic growth,
which has been the impetus for the regional power shift, are still uncertain,
with some predicting the coming collapse of a Chinese economic bubble, and
others believing in the sustainability of Chinese economic growth for the
decades to come. The US position in Asia also remains uncertain, depending
upon its continued economic recovery, and a strong commitment to the
policy of rebalancing towards Asia. If these Chinese and US factors continue
to strengthen, then a dual leadership system is sustainable. However, if
either the US or China suffers a future economic downturn, or if the US is
unable to follow through with the rebalance, then it will further the
uncertainty of a dual leadership apparatus. In any case, the uncertain nature
of US-China relations will have an enormous impact on the region as well as
the globe for years to come.

DA Agenda Politics

link
Congressional opposition saps political capital from other
agenda items
Kahn 15 Steven A. Tananbaum Senior Fellow for International Economics
(Robert, interviewed by Eleanor Albert, Council of Foreign Affairs, A Bank Too
Far? March 2015, http://www.cfr.org/global-governance/bank-toofar/p36290)//PS
My colleague Elizabeth C. Economy has an excellent blog post on the issue, making a compelling case that

its time for the U.S. government to shift course. While I agree with her on substantive grounds, I have a
great deal of concern about the consequences of heading down the path
toward membership. First of all, its extremely unlikely that Congress would
approve U.S. participation in and a financial contribution to a Chinese-led bank. To date,
Congress has been unwilling to approve a much less controversial IMF reform
package, and the Obama administration's efforts to negotiate a Trans-Pacific
Partnership will require whatever political capital the administration can muster
on international economic issues. Even if Congress were to consider the bill, there would be a
substantial risk of congressional add-ons, such as enforcement of penalties
against countries found to manipulate their currencies for competitive
advantage, that would make the bill unacceptable to the Obama
administration. It would be a black eye for the administration for to the United States were to join the
join, and let the bank rise or fall on its own merits. bank and then not deliver on its commitment. The best
course for the United States is to back away from opposition to the AIIB, allow others to join, and let the
bank rise or fall on its own merits.

Plan costs political capital opposition and spending

Chow 16 Chair in Business Law at Ohio State University Moritz College of
Law (Daniel C.K. Chow, Why China Established the Asia Infrastructure
Investment Bank, 2/25/16, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2737888)//NH
for the United States is to join the AIIB and attempt to stem the AIIBs influence from
the inside. This option, however, is unrealistic. The United States has indicated that it will not join the
AIIB and political realities suggest that such an option would not pass muster in
the U.S. Congress. Joining the AIIB requires a capital contribution in the
billions of dollars to a Chinese controlled bank, a move not likely to be
approved by Congress. Even if the United States did join the AIIB, its role will be carefully limited
by the State-Party. No one in the Executive or the Congress of the United States should
have any illusions to the contrary. Whether China will attempt to use the AIIB to further the
One option

goals of the State-Party seems to be a foregone conclusion. It is simply a political reality that nations often
use multilateral institutions that they control as policy tools to further their own national interests. Why
should anyone expect China to behave otherwise? This article also points out the most evident policies
that China might wish to promote through the AIIB. It would be unrealistic to believe that while the United
States uses the World Bank and the IMF to promote the Washington Consensus and U.S. goals, that China
will not attempt to do the same in using the AIIB, under its firm control, to further Chinas policy goals. Of
course, it is possible that China will not succeed in its efforts because China might meet effective
opposition from other members of the AIIB. This possibility seems unlikely but at this point, at the infancy
of the AIIB, it is not possible to see exactly how the AIIBs development will unfold. Yet, it is a development

is worth watching because it will indicate whether China will begin to succeed in displacing the United
States as the final arbiter of the rules of international trade in the modern global economy.

Plan costs political capital empirics and spending

capital commitment = financial contribution

Keatley 15 (Robert Keatley, former editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal and the South China Morning Post,
China's AIIB Challenge: How Should America Respond? The National Interest, 4-18-2015,
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-big-strategic-blunder-not-joining-chinas-aiib-12666?page=show)KMM

To join would require a capital commitment,

something a Republican Congress is unlikely to provide even if President Obama
asks. After all, the AIIB was born partly because Congress consistently has refused to
authorize a larger voice for Beijing in international agencies that the United States
dominates, which would give China a role reflecting its new economic strength. For example, for five
years it has ignored legislation authorizing a cost-free (to U.S. taxpayers) revision of
International Monetary Fund quotas despite administration urging. Even so, the
Washingtons next move is unclear.

administration should swallow its pride and explore the possibility of getting inside the tent, perhaps with
Japan, rather than remain a lonely outsider. On the positive side, Jim Yong Kim, the American who leads the
World Bank, already plans talks about future cooperation with the AIIB.

Congressional opposition is overwhelming

Hadar 15 -Leon. Foreign policy analyst, author (AIIB: Washington Loses
Campaign Against Beijing March 2015,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1666292723/F8C398018F8D4A9CPQ/4ac
countid-=35396)//SW
'WHAT was he thinking?' is the kind of rhetorical question we would direct at, for example, the lazy highschool student who ended up plagiarising the historical narrative posted on the website of the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) and submitted it as a class paper on race relations in America. It was a silly idea that didn't make a

we need to ask
US policymakers who appeared not to make a lot of sense on many levels
when they decided to launch a major diplomatic campaign against China's
proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Remember how American
lot of sense, and it wasn't going to work. Which is unfortunately the kind of question

officials and lawmakers were delivering those sermons to the Chinese a few years ago, arguing that as
China was emerging as a leading geostrategic and geo- economic power, it needed to take a more activist
role as a "stakeholder" in world affairs? In particular, the Americans were complaining that as it was
becoming one of the world's two largest economies, China should start using its financial resources to help
stabilise the global economy. Indeed, the Americans were pointing to the role that they had played in the

Washington helped establish the

foundations of the so-called Bretton Woods system, including by creating and
providing most of the funding for the World Bank (WB) and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), and proposed that China follow in America's footsteps and do the same now
aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II when

in responding to the needs of struggling economies worldwide. So the Chinese got the message and
expressed their interest in playing a more central role in the IMF in a way that befits their economic power.

Republican President George W Bush and

Democratic President Barack Obama proposed plans aimed at restructuring
the decision-making system of the IMF and other financial multilateral
institutions in a way that would give the Chinese more votes but would also place
In response, the administrations of both

more responsibility on them and on other emerging markets to help stabilise the global economy. But then

the US Congress, driven by the pressure of Republican majorities, refused to

endorse the plan advanced by both Mr Bush and Mr Obama that would have
transferred more power at the IMF to the Chinese. The nationalist Republicans
warned that the Chinese, together with other emerging markets, would use
their new power to supposedly shift the direction of the Washington-based
institution in a way that would run contrary to US interests. Recognising the
opposition they faced at the IMF and elsewhere as they tried to become responsible stakeholders, officials
in Beijing decided to adopt a different strategy, by helping to form new multilateral financial institutions.
Hence the plan offered by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a trip to Indonesia in 2013 to launch an Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB was then unveiled in October 2014 in Beijing. The Chinese
explained that Asia's rising infrastructure financing needs - estimated by some experts to eventually rise to
the trillions - could not be met by other US-led financial institutions, like the WB and
the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and that Beijing would be providing half of the planned initial US$50
billion financing for the AIIB. They even invited the Americans to become one of the founding members of
the new institution. India, a top US ally, agreed to join the organisation, followed by South Korea and Japan,
as well as leading European partners of the United States like Germany, France and Italy - and also Britain,
whom the Americans accused of "constant accommodation" of China after London applied for membership
in the new institution. American officials and pundits countered the Chinese move by arguing that
the AIIB and other IMF-like multilateral institutions advanced by the Chinese were posing a challenge to the
international economic order that the Americans and their allies established in the post-1945 era particularly because the new institutions would not operate on the principles adopted at Bretton Woods.

China was finding itself in. It

couldn't gain more power at the IMF because the Republicans in the
US Congress worried that Beijing would then challenge the international
economic order. But then, China wasn't also allowed to promote new financial
institutions, because some in Washington suspected that that would allow
Beijing to, well, challenge the international economic order. So it wasn't surprising
that from the Chinese perspective, US opposition to the AIIB was seen as part of an
effort to contain China, especially at a time when the United States was championing a new
CONTAINING CHINA All these pointed to the Catch-22 situation that

regional trade organisation - the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - which Beijing was not invited to join. But
as it became evident that US opposition to the Chinese plan had forced Washington into a diplomatic culde-sac as more of its allies began indicating that they planned to apply for membership in the AIIB, the
Obama administration started turning around. It adopted the kind of accommodative approach advocated
by critics of its policy in Washington that calls for forming partnerships between the AIIB and the parallel
US-backed financial multilateral institutions, like the WB and the ADB. In the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em,
join 'em", the Americans have concluded that collaborating with the Chinese and other AIIB members
would allow them to exert more influence in the organisation - by ensuring that it would adhere to current
lending standards of the international financial system, like transparency and worker protections and the
environment - and that American companies would not face discrimination when they try to participate

US Treasury Secretary
Jacob Lew expressed willingness on the part of the Obama administration to cooperate with the AIIB if
in infrastructure projects in Asia. During congressional testimony last week,

it would conclude that the new institution was following current lending standards. And he also urged
America's allies in Asia and Europe to do the same before the joining the organisation. American concern
has always been whether the AIIB would "adhere to the kinds of high standards that the international
financial institutions have developed", Mr Lew told Congress. "I hope before the final commitments
are made, anyone who lends their name to this organisation will make sure that the governance is

US lawmakers that if they were worried that the

American position in the international financial system was being challenged
by China, the most effective way for them to respond to that threat would be by approving the
appropriate," he stressed. Then he explained to

proposed plan to reform the IMF, and allow the Chinese to play a constructive role as stakeholders in the
current multilateral financial system - ensuring that America's international credibility and influence
wouldn't be threatened.

IMF bill proves Congressional opposition

Kenny 14, -Charles. Economist, International Economics MA from John
Hopkins, Development Studeis MA from The School of Oriental and African
Studies (Kenny, Misguided, Self-Defeating War on the IMF
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-19/senate-republican-andsmith-college-criticism-of-the-imf-is-misguided)//SW
You have to feel a little sorry for the International Monetary Fund and its managing director, Christine Lagarde. Invited to
give the commencement address at Smith College, an elite womens college in Massachusetts, Lagarde canceled her

legislation to
enable IMF voting reform is being held up by Senate Republicans concerned
that under the proposed changes, the fund wouldnt be imperialist enough
and would bolster the influence of countries such as China and Russia at the
expense of the U.S. Both sets of critiques are misplaced and unfair, to the institution and to Lagarde personally.
appearance last week in the face of student protests calling the fund imperialist. Meanwhile,

Yet while the charges of imperialism levied by the Smith College students tend to receive the most attention, the

Senate Republicans pose a far bigger threat to the IMFs viability. The criticisms of
IMF policy made by Smiths students deserve examination. The IMF has been a primary culprit in the failed
developmental policies implanted in some of the worlds poorest countries, read a Smith college petition. This has led
directly to the strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide. After 10
years of strong economic growth, low inflation, and declining debt across the developing world, this line of argument is a
lot less persuasive than it used to be. But even in the comparatively grim 1980s and 1990s, there was little evidence that
IMF programs had a particularly adverse impact on poor people. Analysis by development economist Bill Easterly in 2000
could find no overall impact of IMF and World Bank adjustment lending on economic growth, though he did point to
suggestive evidence that the lending smoothed the consumption of the poormarginally increasing it in years when
output contracted, marginally reducing it when output expanded. A laterpaper by Easterly found no causal impact of
adjustment lending on policy change in recipient countries. So much for the neoimperialist imposition of a neoliberal
agenda through the agency of multilateral institutions. More recently, the IMF has been making pronouncements that
might get a cheer at an Occupy Wall Street rally. Lagarde has suggested, Across too many societies, the gap between the
haves and have-nots is getting wider and strains are getting fiercer. The IMF has come out swinging on the harm caused
by inequality: Lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, while redistribution
appears generally benign in terms of its impact on growth. Heres a recent IMF working paperon stimulus packages:
Studies suggest that fiscal multipliers are currently high in many advanced economies. One important implication is that
fiscal tightening could raise the debt ratio in the short term, as fiscal gains are partly wiped out by the decline in output.
Lagarde has repeatedly suggested Europe needed to boost stimulus spending, while U.S. budget cuts were too big, too
fast. And heres the managing director on climate change: clearly one of the great challenges of our time, one of the
great tests of our generation. The IMFs position on climate policy is that [f]iscal instruments (emissions taxes, trading
systems with allowance auctions, fuel taxes, charges for scarce road space and water resources, etc.) can and should play
a central role in promoting greener growth. The IMF reform that Lagarde is championing would make the funds board
more representative of global power. It would not only allow the organization to provide greater sums to countries in
financial crisis, which should help smooth the consumption of the poor, but it would increase the voting power of
developing countries on the IMF board. If being less imperialist entails being more representative of the distribution of
world economic power and better at representing the 99 percent of the worlds population, the reform would do precisely
that. Despite the howls of campus leftists, the politicians on the right seem to have more reason to worry about the

Republican Senators, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and

Ted Cruz of Texas, have led the charge to block Lagardes proposed reforms.
Less worried by the funds patriarchy abroad, Pauls 2010 Senate campaign literature
suggested he thinks the IMF is undermining American power: Today, America
is often subservient to foreign bodies such as the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). And the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has long been concerned that the organization is too
direction the IMF is taking.

keen on bailouts, deficit spending, andclimate change mitigation. Close all those tabs. Open this email. Get Bloomberg's
daily newsletter. Top of Form Bottom of Form But the right is being short-sighted at best regarding IMF reforms. It is true
that the U.S. share of voting power in the organization would drop from 16.7 percent to 16.5 percent under the proposal.
But the changes would also bolster the funds capacity to respond to financial and economic crises. Not least, the reforms
might allow the Ukraine to borrow $6 billion from the IMF over the next three years in addition to the $17 billion package
the organization put together in the past few weeks. That dwarfs the $1 billion in loan guarantees the U.S. Senate was
able to agree to in the past few weeksand suggests how powerful a tool the fund can be in support of U.S. economic and
political interests overseas. (That is, if IMF support during the last few years for European allies from Greece to Ireland
wasnt enough evidence already.) The protesting Smith students show how distant the academy can drift from the real
world. But at least theyre only students, not lawmakers. The campaign by Senate Republicans to delay modest and
sensible IMF reform, meanwhile, displays anything but enlightened self-interest. So perhaps the message for both sides is
the same: Do grow up.

Republican Congress will oppose the plan IMF proves

AFP 14 Internally respected news agency (Agence France-Presse is the 3rd
largest news agency in the world IMF reforms threatened by Republican
electoral sweep, Cigi online, 11-9-14, https://www.cigionline.org/articles/imfreforms-threatened-republican-electoral-sweep, Bernstein)
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde might need to get to work perfecting her belly-dance.
The normally reserved head of the global crisis lender promised in October to perform for the US Congress
if that would get it to endorse crucial, much-delayed reforms for the Fund. "I will do belly-dancing if that's
what it takes to get the US to ratify," she said. But now the Republican victory in Tuesday's US elections
has likely placed ratification further away -- and she will have to work harder to convince the IMF's largest
shareholder. "The change in the US political landscape is not a good omen for progress on IMF reforms,"

the Obama administration has sought

to convince Republicans in Congress to formally endorse the reform -- decided in
2010 with US support -- that doubles its financial resources and increases slightly
the voting power in the IMF of emerging economies like China , Russia and Brazil. As
the largest shareholder, the US endorsement is necessary to implement the reforms .
All other major economies have ratified them already. But the White House
has repeatedly failed to get the ratification through Congress, against
opposition from Republicans. Some Republicans have said specifically they do
not want to increase the influence of China and Russia in the Fund -- even though
the US would remain the dominant IMF power after the reforms . That leaves the
said Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official. Since 2012,

emerging economies increasingly impatient. China, the world's second largest economy, only holds 4
percent of the voting rights, barely more than Italy, whose economy is one-fifth the size. In reaction, in July
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa joined hands to create their own monetary fund for emergency
needs. They could take the opportunity at the coming G20 summit in Australia this month to pound the
table over the issue, according to the Russian representative Svetlana Lukash. "The most important thing
for us is the reform of the IMF, a problem which has not yet been solved within the framework of the G20,"
she said Friday. - Plan B - The IMF, which declined to talk about the issue, is itself anxious. Already under
attack over its legitimacy, it has to work with more limited resources as it awaits US action. "The lack of
approval will result in the weakening of the IMF as the main anchor of the international monetary system,"
said Domenico Lombardi, former advisor to the IMF board. If the reform is not adopted by the end of this
year, the Fund is to present a "Plan B" to its board, the specifics of which remain vague. That then would
require new negotiations among its 188 member-states. Some experts say the Fund should press for US
ratification by the end of this year, while the current Congress remains in office and before the new one
sits in January. "The advantage is that it's not a new issue," said Ted Truman, former Treasury official. " The

current Republican representatives are now better informed about the IMF
legislation. I'm not saying that they're perfectly informed, but they're better informed." Douglas
Rediker, a former US representative to the IMF board, said the opposition in Congress has mainly been part
of "internal domestic political maneuvers that have little to nothing to do with the IMF reform itself". "It's
going to take a collaborative effort between the White House, the Senate, and the House to actually work
together to understand how important this is." To make that happen, Lagarde could very well have to gear
up her belly dance.

at: no congress
Congressional action is necessary
Northam 15, -NPR journalist, winner of Associated Press awards, Regional
Edward R. Murrow awards. (Northam, Dozens of Countries Join China-Backed
Bank Opposed by Washington http://www.npr.-org/sections/thetwoway/2015/03/31/396604082/dozens-of-countries-join-china-backed-bankopposed-by-washington)//SW
Dozens of countries have slid under Tuesday's deadline to join a Chinabacked infrastructure development bank that is opposed by Washington. U.S.
allies such as South Korea and Australia were among the more than 40
nations that signed up at the last moment as founding members of the Asia
Infrastructure Investment Bank. Key European allies France, Germany, Italy
and the U.K. joined earlier in the month. And in the past few days, Russia,
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan and even
Taiwan a regional rival of China jumped on the bandwagon, according to
Reuters. Japan is the one notable exception, choosing to remain loyal to the
U.S. China first floated the idea of a development bank about two years ago
as a way to help finance the enormous infrastructural needs in Asia. The Asia
Development Bank estimates a need for $8 trillion in infrastructure
investment over the next decade for roads, airports, power facilities and the
like. But as NPR has reported, the Obama administration opposes the bank.
Officially, the White House says it has concerns about transparency,
governance and social and environmental safeguards. Unofficially, the AIIB is
seen as a challenge to American influence in the Asia Pacific region, and to
U.S.-backed institutions such as the World Bank. The Wall Street Journal
reports that the Obama administration is now proposing the AIIB create a
partnership with existing development institutions, such as the World Bank.
The newspaper reports that World Bank President Jim Yong Kim is already in
"deep discussions" with the AIIB on how the two banks can closely work
together. But no decision has been made by the Chinese-led bank on whether
it will partner with an existing international bank. There have been calls for
the U.S. to sign on to the A sia I nfrastructure I nvestment B ank. But that
would need approval by Congress . The Center for Strategic and International
Studies says there's little sympathy in Congress for any move "that would, or
would appear to, cede influence to China especially at great financial cost
to the United States."

yesDA Fragmentation

turn fragmentation
Increased AIIB credibility causes institutional
fragmentation
Subacchi 15- director of international economics research at Chatham
House- (Paola, Foreign Policy, The AIIB Is a Threat to Global Economic
Governance, 3/31/15, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/31/the-aiib-is-athreat-to-global-economic-governance-china/)//PS
The AIIBs creation is a response to Asias large infrastructure financing gap,
which has been estimated to be about $8 trillion between 2010 and 2020.
However, besides this purely economic argument it would be difficult not to
detect, behind the establishment of the new bank, Chinas urge to advance
its influence in the region. However, besides this purely economic argument it
would be difficult not to detect, behind the establishment of the new bank,
Chinas urge to advance its influence in the region. Under the current
arrangement, the Asian Development Bank (ABD), which is a part of the
World Bank, is primarily responsible for Asian infrastructure financing and
other development projects. But China has limited impact on the Asian
Development Bank, which is in the grip of Asias established powers, the
United States and Japan. But even if the AIIBs creation is in Chinas interest
as the new regional power, the move does little to respond to the need to
improve multilateralism and to strengthen global economic governance. In
fact, it may do the opposite. The risk now is the creation of two blocs of
economic influence in Asia: one led by China and the other by the United
States and Japan. Demand for infrastructure investment is large enough to
accommodate both even a third development bank could probably find
demand but this is not the point. At stake is good governance and
multilateralism for instance, in a world of fragmented governance what
would be the incentive for Congress to finally approve the IMF reform? In
addition to fragmented institutions and governance, the AIIB could present a
risk of establishing divergent investment standards a risk already
significant in trade as China has reacted to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, of
which it is not part, by accelerating its own trade arrangements in the region.
Can the rest of the world not only the United States afford to leave
China to set up its own standards on both trade and investment? The concern
here is not on the quality of these standards and the assumption is not
that Chinese-set standards are by definition inadequate. It is on maintaining a
harmonized, consistent, and multilateral framework of rules and standards
that help integrate, rather than fragment, the world economy. Rather than
venting their frustration on Britain, the United States would benefit most from
leading by example and embracing a two-fold strategy. First, Congress could
press ahead and approve the IMF reform with no further delay. Second, the
administration could engage with China on the issue of the new regional
banks the New Development Bank, better known as the BRICS bank, is the
next down the line within the setup provided by the G20.

AIIB fragments the international order and the plan

doesnt solve
Claxtin 15 [Karl- analyst at ASPI, The Real Lesson in Americas AIIB
Disaster, The National Interest, May 1, 2015,
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-real-lesson-americas-aiibdisaster-12785?page=2]
A month ago, Stewart Patrick from the Council on Foreign Relations described the move by France,
Germany, Italy and the UK to become founding members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure

(AIIB) as a body blow to the US-led international order created in

the wake of World War II, which is crumbling before our eyes . Few other analysts
Investment Bank

have been quite as gloomy. Most accounts of Australias belated decision to dip a toe in the water suggest
the benefits of getting involved will outweigh the costs of not participating. According to that logic ,

the
more Western shareholders with seats at the table from the start, the less
risk the new bank will adopt opaque governance structures or support
Chinese political and business interests . A multilateral commercial bank like AIIB that
makes bad lending decisions due to poor procedures would find itself in
trouble faster than alternatives like Chinas Silk Road Fund . The bank might even
give Beijing a responsible stake in international public goods where theres an $8 trillion need. Australias
last-minute scramble to make the AIIBs cut-off date was inelegant. But while following the herd wouldnt
have burnished our reputation with either Washington or Beijing last month, at least it underlines to both

Thered
be little to be gained in trying to act as a trusted bridge between the two
countries: inserting ourselves wouldnt assist their clear communication but
would imply an unhelpful equivalence. Hugh regards the AIIBs fairly graceful lift-off as a
where we sit. Hugh Whites China Choice is principally a matter for Washington, not Canberra.

more significant milestone than do most, especially given Americas awkward effort to prevent it. He calls
the AIIB debacle a wakeup call for Washington as Americas China consensus slowly unravels. The
episode fits the stark choice he sees between the US acknowledging China as an equal and yielding
commensurate space or else trying to contain it in order to preserve American primacy.

DA Containment

u yes containment
Joining the AIIB ends the perception of a containment
policy increasing relations with China
Kennedy 15, Deputy Director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Washingtons Big China
Screw-up," Foreign Policy, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/26/washingtonsbig-china-screw-up-aiib-asia-infrastructure-investment-bank-chinacontainment-chinafile/; WG
The Obama Administration has obviously made a major strategic blunder in resisting the establishment of the AIIB. Many
of Americas most loyal allies have rejected the folly of this intransigence . By opting to join this start-up international
lending institution, they will be much better positioned to shape the governance of the AIIB as insiders, rather than voicing
criticism as outsiders, as the United States apparently prefers. Washingtons Cold-War style criticism of its allies for their
constant accommodation of China is a new and embarrassing low in the China debate. It is both ironic and hypocritical
that Washingtons response is to circle the wagons around the existing Bretton Woods institutionsthe International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The U.S. Congress has repeatedly dragged its feet on IMF reforms. And lending
programs of the U.S.-dominated World Bank have done little to address infrastructure deficiencies in any part of the world.
The ADB estimates an Asian infrastructure void of some $8 trillion over the 2010 to 2020 period. Clearly new lending
capacity is needed to meet this daunting challenge. Nor does the AIIB pose a threat to more established and experienced
international lending institutions. Its initial capital base of $50 billion is less than a third of that which supports the ADB
and less than a quarter of that held by the World Bank. Surely, an $80 trillion global economy can afford to support much
greater lending capacity than is the case today. But there is a more sinister aspect of Washingtons resistance to this

It is but the latest in an increasingly worrisome string of anti-China

actions. The Obama Administration has focused on the TPP as its signature
initiative on trade liberalization; unfortunately, it excludes China, the source
of Americas largest trade imbalance. Yet another anti-China currency
manipulation bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. And there are
ongoing frictions over cyber issues, as well as over territorial claims in the
China Sea . Suddenly, Americas Asian pivot seems like nothing more than a
thinly veiled China containment strategy. Is the rise of China a risk or an opportunity? Washington
China-sponsored initiative.

is clearly fixated on the threat all but ignoring the benefits that are likely to come with the emergence of a consumer-led
Chinese economy. This shouldnt be so surprising. History tells us that dominant powers always have trouble with rising
powers. Washington is bristling over Chinas ascendancy. China, with the baggage of 150 years of a perceived sense of
deep humiliation by the West, doesnt take kindly to that reaction. The AIIB folly only deepens concerns over an
increasingly troubled relationship. A rethink by Washington is urgently needed.

TPP represents a complete transition to containment

Murgues 15 (Etienne Murgues, project manager specializing in innovative
and entrepreneurial solutions for development projects for NGOs, currently
part of the United Nations Volunteers program, Is the Trans-Pacific
Partnership a Step Toward Containment? 11-10-2015,
http://foreignpolicyconcepts.com/is-the-trans-pacific-partnership-a-steptoward-containment/) //LVF
Concepts & Thoughts Toronto, Ontario The

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a regional

Free Trade Agreement (FTA) introduced as the biggest multilateral trade agreement ever
reached. It includes the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam . This is a high
standard FTA that aims to liberalize goods and services beyond what the World Trade Organization had
envisioned with the Doha Round of talks. This FTA is regarded as an economic achievement for all the
signatories; however, this could mean more for the United States administration. Determined to sustain its

President Barack Obama in recent years launched a

shift towards the region by increasing the U.S. military involvement,
leadership in the Asia-Pacific,

reinforcing diplomatic relations and signing new economic agreements such

as the TPP. This could be seen as a way to assert American influence in the
region and contain Chinese in its own backyard U.S.-China relationship in the Asia-Pacific
region The Asia-Pacific is of great strategic and economic interest to the U.S., and
China understandably feels threatened by American involvement in the
region. The maritime dispute is obviously the most mediatized issue between China and its neighbours,
and this issue has displayed a more forceful China when it comes to territorial disputes. The U.S. has
utilized the South China Sea dispute as a pretext to assert itself as the
guardian of regional order and to portray China as the adversar y. China believes
that the US is trying to undermine it by hindering its development through economic and military

Under the Obama administration, the much ballyhooed pivot to Asia

was launched which encouraged increased U.S. military presence in the Pacific. The U.S. signed a tenencirclement

year defence agreement with the Philippines; deployed Marines and aircraft in Darwin, Australia; restated
its strategic agreement with Japan. 60% of U.S. navy assets are now assigned to the Pacific Ocean. Though

this type of
resource allocation by the U.S. has not been welcomed by China . The economic
the shift is not militarily focused (deployment of armed forces in the region is minimal),

interdependence between both countries has actually worked against taking a bolder diplomatic stand and
harsher military positioning. Additionally, China is the leading trading partner in the region with growing
economic and diplomatic ties with regional states with increased military capacity. This has made it hard
for countries in the region to take a side. Though many welcome the U.S. involvement in balancing Chinese
power, their dependence on China is often too strong to act against. It is based on these merits that
constructive engagement remains in the interest of both countries to maintain security in Asia-Pacific.

The TPP could be seen as a way to toughen the U.S. containment strategy as
it purposely excluded China from one of the biggest trade agreements ever
reached. With the second largest economy in the world, snubbing China
shows that they are indeed the biggest losers in this agreement , particularly when
partner countries include four different continents and ASEAN states that fall within Chinas sphere of

Improving relations between the U.S. and ASEAN countries is viewed

as interfering with Chinas regional policies.
influence.

u yes revisionist
Even if the government is not explicitly revisionist,
pressure from an increasingly nationalist populace will
drive it to aggressive behavior
Zihao Liu 15 "The Dual Mentality of Chinese Military Nationalism," The
Diplomacist, https://diplomacist.com/2015/04/14/201549the-dual-mentalityof-chinese-military-nationalism/, WG
The tremendous progress the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has made in its
weaponry and combat capabilities has been recorded in detail by many China
watchers and therefore does not warrant another depiction here. Suffice it to say that the Chinese military,
with its state-of-the-art warships and fighters, has already become a force to be reckoned with by other

Less widely noticed, however, are the effects of military

modernization on Chinese nationalism . A close examination of Chinese online military posts
yields an intriguing observation: many Chinese nationalists already consider Chinas
military power as considerably superior to (or at least on par with) that of the
U.S. in a number of key areas , but at the same time they feel increasingly threatened by the
major powers.

U.S. in the Asia-Pacific. The confidence of Chinese netizens in their countrys military is readily apparent in
numerous online reports and analyses about global military developments. In fact, in many of them, the
new weaponry of the PLA is depicted as not only the best in the world, but also as nearly invincible. One
salient example is the DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile. Commonly referred to as the aircraft-carrier killer,

Because
neither the U.S. nor any other nation possesses similar technology and
because the missile is (allegedly) difficult to intercept, many Chinese netizens
believe that it can turn any aircraft carrier into a sitting duck. Another
example is the myth that Chinas laser weapon rarely mentioned officially
exceeds US military capabilities by at least several years. One article claims that
this missile generates more pride than perhaps any other weapon among Chinas military fans.

Chinas laser weapon is capable of shooting down satellites and stealth fighters, which according to the
author is somehow consistent with his latter claim that China remains very humble. Some other areas
in which China is thought (by its netizens) to be leading the U.S. include global satellite systems, Airborne
Warning and Control aircrafts (AWAC), ship born sonars, and the army (yes, the entire army). Many
Chinese nationalists already consider Chinas military power as considerably superior to (or at least on par
with) that of the U.S. in a number of key areas, but at the same time they feel increasingly threatened by

This confidence in Chinas military power is coupled with

contempt for Americas military strength. More and more negative information about the
the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific.

U.S. military is beginning to appear on Chinas military websites. These reports do not necessarily originate
in China, but their frequent publication after translation demonstrates that many Chinese netizens like to
belittle the U.S. A recent report, for example, called the most advanced U.S. missile defense radar the
sea-based X-band radar a piece of garbage that devours gold. In another instance, one Chinese official
claimed that it is a certainty that Chinas J-31 could take down a F-35, a U.S. fighter jet subjected to

More astonishingly, however, is a recent opinion poll in which

over 85 percent of respondents agreed that China already has the capability
to take back the disputed islands in the East and South China Sea. Even when
they were told that the U.S. military would intervene, that number dropped
only to 73 percent. These supposed military facts, coupled with Chinas success in leading the Asian
constant mockery.

Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and in evacuating citizens from Yemen (compared to the sluggish US
response), have convinced many netizens that China has already surpassed the U.S. as the worlds
strongest power. Nonetheless, Chinese netizens also view the U.S. as increasingly threatening, especially
since it is actively pushing its regional allies to contain China. The U.S. intention to deploy the Terminal
High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, for example, is widely interpreted in China as

More recently, when two

U.S. F-18 fighters made an emergency landing in Taiwan, Chinese netizens
a ploy to neutralize the strategic nuclear deterrence of China and Russia.

immediately speculated that the U.S. is trying to reinforce its containment of

China in order to counter the glamor of the AIIB . Other areas where the U.S. is seen as
extremely threatening include the growing U.S.-Japan defense relations and the U.S. determination to

One explanation of the seemingly contradictory

attitude of Chinese netizens is that they perceive the U.S. as a hegemon
falling from grace one that is desperately trying everything it can to thwart
Chinas development. Another possibility is that there exists an internal division among Chinese
interfere in the South China Sea.

netizens between those who think that China is invincible and those who still advocate caution. After all, it
would be a huge mistake to view all Chinese netizens, let alone the entire Chinese public, as arrogant

However, given Chinas continuing military development and

nationalist media coverage, there is little chance that Chinese military
nationalism will be subdued. The prevalence of military nationalism can
create political uncertainty, especially if policy makers mistake it for a
genuine representation of the public will. Furthermore, it demonstrates that something
more than a security dilemma is at work in Sino-U.S. relations: the Chinese public is
increasingly confident that China can successfully challenge Americas
military hegemony, and with the U.S. becoming more provocative, China will
react more forcefully, increasing the risk of escalation.
zealots.

link u
Refusal to join AIIB is perceived as containment now
Subacchi 15 Paolo Subacchi is a Research Director of International
Economics at Chatham House and Professor of Economics at the University of
Bologna. Americas Leadership in Multipolar World. Korea Times. 4/15/16.
<http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/d
ocview.do?
docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T24287916886&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE
&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T24287916890&cisb=22_T24287916889
&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=174045&docNo=26> //LVF
Giving up the spotlight is never easy. The United States, like many aging celebrities, is struggling to share
the stage with new faces, especially China. The upcoming meetings of the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank - two institutions dominated by the US and its Western allies - provide an ideal opportunity
to change that.

The US must come to terms with the reality that the world has
changed. The longer the US remains in a state of denial, the more damage it
will do to its interests and its global influence, which remains substantial, if
more constrained than before. The world no longer adheres to the static Cold
War order, with two blocs locked in open but guarded confrontation. Nor does
it work according to the Pax Americana that dominated in the decade after
the Soviet Union's collapse, when the US briefly emerged as the sole
superpower. Today's world is underpinned by a multipolar order, which
emerged from the rise of developing economies - most notably China - as
major actors in trade and finance. The US - not to mention the other G7 countries - now must
compete and cooperate not only with China, but also with India, Brazil, and others through expanded

To this end, the US must show leadership and adaptability. It

cannot refuse to support China's efforts to expand its role in global
governance. Nor should it issue harsh rebukes to its allies when they do not
follow suit, as it did when the United Kingdom announced its intention to join
the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The US seems to be stuck in
forums like the G20.

the Bretton Woods system, the rules-based order - underpinned by the IMF and the World Bank, with the
US dollar at its heart - that emerged after World War II. The Bretton Woods system institutionalized
America's geopolitical supremacy, leaving the old imperial power, the UK, to step aside - a step that it took
graciously, if a little desperately, given its grave postwar economic situation. Over the years, however, the
Bretton Woods system, with its mix of liberal multilateralism and market-oriented economic policies, has
come to symbolize the Anglo-American dominance of the global economy that much of the world now
criticizes, especially since the global financial crisis. In particular, the Washington Consensus - the set of
free-market principles that influences the policies of the IMF, the World Bank, the US, and the UK - has

Against
this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that China has been using its growing
global influence to help engineer a new economic order - one in which the US
dollar does not reign supreme. Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's
Bank of China, China's central bank, has repeatedly called for a shift toward
an international monetary system that allows for the use of multiple
currencies for payments and investment. Such an approach would reduce the
risk and impact of liquidity crises, while decoupling the international
monetary system from the 'economic conditions and sovereign interests of
any single country.' Of course, China believes that its own currency, the
renminbi, should eventually play a central role in this new monetary system,
generated considerable resentment, especially after the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

so that it reflects China's role not only as a leading engine of global economic
growth, but also as the world's largest creditor. Indeed, together with the other
systemically important economies (the US, the UK, Japan, and the eurozone) China drives trends that, for

Since 2009, China's leadership has been

pursuing a set of policies that encourage the use of the renminbi in regional
trade and reduce its dependence on the dollar in international payments. But
expanding the renminbi's role in the international monetary system is just the
first step toward institutionalizing a multipolar world order. China has also
spearheaded the establishment of new multilateral institutions, with AIIB
following on the heels of the New Development Bank, created with other
major emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa). To be sure, the US is right to
better or worse, extend far beyond its borders.

wonder whether the new order that China hopes to build will be as open and rules-based as the Americanled order - the one that gave China the market access it needed to achieve its spectacular economic rise.
But the answer to that question can be found only by engaging China on the issue of reform of global

As the US stubbornly pursues a

policy of containment toward China - exemplified in its fight against the AIIB's
establishment, its relentless accusations of currency manipulation, and its
refusal to ratify IMF reforms that would increase China's influence - it risks
losing its ability to shape what comes next. The result could be a world of fragmented
governance - not by denying that change is needed at all.

blocs - an outcome that would undermine not only global prosperity, but also cooperation on shared
challenges. The Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank offer an important opportunity to signal a
new approach toward China. And there could be no more credible signal than US support for the renminbi's
addition to the basket of currencies that the IMF uses to value its international reserve asset, the Special
Drawing Right. America will be in the spotlight once again. But how will it perform?

Other acts of engagement dont thump the fact that its

a Chinese proposal is both key to signal containment and
proves the AFF is distinct
Roach, PhD 15 (Stephen Roach, He is a Senior Fellow at Yale Universitys
Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a Senior Lecturer at Yales School of
Management. He was formerly Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the
firms Chief Economist for the bulk of his 30-year career at Morgan Stanley,
heading up a highly regarded team of economists around the world. Roachs
current teaching and research program focuses on the impacts of Asia on the
broader global economy. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1982, Roach
served on the research staff of the Federal Reserve Board and was also a
research fellow at the Brookings Institution. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics
from New York University. Foreign Policy China File. Washingtons Big
China Screw Up. <http://forei gnpolicy.com/2015/03/26/washingtons-bigchina-screw-up-aiib-asia-infrastructure-investment-bank-china-containmentchinafile/> 6/2/16//LVF
In 2005, then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick famously called on China to be a responsible
stakeholder. He meant that China needed not only to comply with its international commitments, but also
to provide public goods to the international community. Well, be careful what you wish for. Since then

China has become much more active in global governance. Chinese occupy
leadership positions in a wide range of institutions . In 2013, China helped broker an
interim deal in the World Trade Organizations Doha Round, and in November 2014, China, along with the
United States, made a new pledge to limit carbon emissions, creating momentum heading into the United

Nations meeting in Paris later this year.

But the AIIB is Chinas first signature

contribution . China certainly could have done a better job of selling the need for a new development
bank. It is still unclear why it would be impossible to improve the quality and quantity of development
assistance in Asia through either the Asian Development Bank (ADB) or the World Bank. The arguments
that those banks were un-fixable and not open to a greater Chinese role or that China deserves pride of
place in a new institution given how much it is contributing leave the impression that the AIIB is a vanity
piece or a disguised cash register for Chinese state-owned enterprises. That said, the United States has
performed even worse. Although joining the AIIB was not an option since Congress would not have
allocated the funds, the U.S. could have adopted the posture of a friendly outside voice. Instead, it
discouraged others from joining in the hope the initiative would collapse or leave China with a small
coalition of the willing. They argued that the bank would not follow international best practices, but in
it appears the U.S. opposed the AIIB simply because it was a Chinese
initiative, full stop . Such knee-jerk antagonism gives life to arguments that
the U.S. opposes Chinas rise and is bent on containing it . Even more important,

reality

American bungling fuels the perception that China can drive a wedge between the United States and its
allies and that U.S. leadership in Asia is on the wane just when it is needed more than ever. Its a shame
that China did not provide greater reassurances early on that the bank would not be a tool of Chinese
industrial policy and geo-strategic maneuvering, and that the U.S. did not do more to pursue such
reassurances and find a way to serve as a constructive supporter. The so-called best practices of existing
multilateral aid institutions too often have not translated into sustained poverty alleviation and
development. There are many other areas of global governance in need of reform, and we can be sure that
the AIIB will not be Chinas last major initiative. Lets hope China and the United States learn from this
experience and find ways to identify areas in need of change where they can collaborate or at least not get
in each others way, instead of being in opposite camps and forcing others in the region and elsewhere to
pick sides. Then both countries will be able to justly claim they are truly acting as responsible stakeholders.

link perception
The plan is perceived as appeasement, encouraging
aggression
Branigan 15 (China correspondent and writer for The Guardian. China
Crisis: West Riven by Age-Old Question: To Appease or to Oppose? <
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/china-bind-is-the-ukaccommodating-or-ceding-too-much-to-superpower> 6/21/16 //LVF
You might call it one of the irregular verbs in international diplomacy: we
engage, you accommodate, they appease. US irritation over Britains decision
to sign up to a new Chinese development bank has laid bare the deep
international divisions over how to deal with the worlds newest superpower.
For the Americans, as for human rights groups and Chinese dissidents,
countries like Britain are too willing to cede power to China as it grows
wealthier and more powerful. One White House official accused the UK last
week of constant accommodation of Beijing. The Foreign Office says its approach to
China is consistent and it continues to raise sensitive issues, but analysts see a marked change since
Beijing punished London over David Camerons meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2012. They note a string of
bilateral deals, regular visits by government ministers to China, emollient remarks on human rights and
especially the muted response to the Chinese governments tight restrictions on voting rights in Hong

All countries have of course

become more accommodating to China, says Katrin Kinzelbach of the Global
Public Policy Institute, who has researched the EU-China human rights
dialogue. Cameron met the Dalai Lama, experienced a backlash and no one stood with him It was
the same when the Germans were in the same situation. Roderic Wye,
associate fellow at Chatham House and previously a China and east Asia
specialist at the Foreign Office, says Europe has signally failed to produce
any consistency in policy towards China. That in itself encourages China to
press hard on issues they feel are important they think sooner or later
there will be a crack. Many suggest the same is true of Asian countries
alarmed by Chinas growing military might and assertiveness, but attracted
by trade with and investment from the worlds second largest economy. Norway
Kong, which has disappointed many in Britains former colony.

is a good example. When the countrys Nobel committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the peace
prize in 2010, its salmon exports plummeted. Government ministers took note. So when the Dalai Lama
visited Oslo last year, no government representatives met him. Guy de Jonquires of the European Centre
for International Political Economy suggests the costs are not terribly severe for a reasonably sized and
influential country, particularly as the Chinese economy slows and appears more precarious. China-UK
trade increased by 11% in 2013, during the Dalai Lama row, and China continued to seek cooperation at

The Chinese are intensely pragmatic and have an awful lot

of stuff they want from us, he said. He suggests the chancellor has been too
quick to offer Beijing advantages such as making it easier for Chinese banks
to set up in London, loosening oversight. If all we want is to be a glorified Singapore,
non-ministerial levels.

where making money and exports are all that matters in foreign policy, thats fine but lets not kid

The more common

accusation is that European countries are not simply selling themselves too
cheaply, but trading human rights concerns for commercial interests. China
assumes any accommodation from a foreign country comes from weakness
and they do not respect weakness. They will bully those who let themselves
ourselves if we want to be taken seriously by anyone else, he said.

be bullied, says Jorge Guajardo, formerly the Mexican ambassador to Beijing and now senior
director at McLarty Associates in Washington. You acquiesce on human rights and China assumes you do
it for economic reasons; they make more demands and you start acquiescing in other areas. India is
probably one of the last countries to accommodate China on anything and at the end of the day, they
work very well together. Some go further, suggesting complaints about meetings with the Dalai Lama are
strategic attempts to exert power through a symbolic issue in the first place. It is easier for some countries
to take a tough stance than others. While Angela Merkel has in some ways been firmer than her
predecessors, that is also possible because of the strength of the German economy, Kinzelbach points out.
We dont have any left that are attractive or impressive enough for China any more, unfortunately, she
said. She argues that the US itself has given ground on human rights issues, particularly at the beginning
of the Obama administration. There was a real desire for partnership and China didnt step up and deliver;
it took advantage, said Bonnie Glaser, an expert on Sino-US relations at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, in a more generous assessment. It was the time of the financial crisis and China saw
the US as weak. Then came the pivot, now portrayed as the strategic rebalance to Asia welcomed
by US allies but viewed by Beijing as an attempt to contain it. While many China watchers in the US
question whether the policy has been effective or even coherent, Glaser sees progress: in the joint
declaration of action on climate change and in better negotiations over issues such as North Korea and
Iran. That reflected attempts to build cooperation where the countries have common ground, while
managing differences, she said. On cyber, South China Sea, trade policy we have been very clear to the
Chinese where we see our interests in jeopardy, she added. Advertisement The US is more able than
other countries to challenge China, but also keener to do so; Japan is in a similar, albeit weaker, position.
The US consider they are the power in Asia-Pacific and, more than anyone in Europe, considers Chinas
rise as a losing game for them, said Feng Zhongping, an expert on Sino-European relations at the China
Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. While European countries would protect their
relationship with the US, they also wanted to benefit from the opportunities for growth and development
offered by Chinas rise, he said. Shen Dingli, professor of international relations at Fudan University,
compared the US adjustment to Chinas peaceful rise to the UKs historical experience of facing a rising US.
Britain constantly accommodates to its own interests, he said; France, Germany and Italys indications that
they too will join the AIIB merely means that they place their overall national interest, and the investment
opportunity at this time, above the narrow interest of allying with America. Jean-Pierre Lehmann,
professor of international political economy at the business school IMD, said: The UK is not constantly
accommodating China; it recognises that China has certain positions and grievances, some
understandable. I dont particularly want to live in a world under Chinese power but we have to engage
intelligently and strategically, without too much hypocrisy. An FCO spokeswoman said: Our approach to
China is consistent. This is a relationship that matters and that brings with it a wealth of opportunities for
closer working on issues that are important worldwide. That does not mean to say we do not have areas on
which we differ, but we handle these through an established process of regular dialogue. We do not see a
choice between securing growth and investment for the UK, and raising sensitive issues, including on Hong
Kong and broader human rights. We raise them both and do so consistently thats what our policy of
engagement is all about. We could not, and would not, do otherwise.

link dollar heg

A growing AIIB puts pressure on US dollar and military
hegemony. Supporting it would only worsen status quo.
OByrne 15 Mark OByrne is the director of research at GoldCore. U.S.
Hegemony and Dollar Threatened By New Chinese Bank GoldCore. 6/24/16

http://www.goldcore.com/us/gold-blog/u-s-hegemony-and-dollar-threatenedby-new-chinese-bank> //LVF
The success of China in attracting countries traditionally within Washingtons
sphere of influence to join its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB),
such as the UK, Israel, Australia and Germany, marks another milestone
toward a new multi polar world and a new era in international politics and
economics. The AIIB is seen as a potential rival to established lenders the
World Bank, IMF and Asian Investment Bank, which are dominated by the
United States. The era of infrastructure investment and multilateral banks
and financial institutions controlled, in large part, by Washington often as an
aggressive strategic policy tool has come to an end. The AIIB which will be
controlled by China will compete with the World Bank and the IMF for
infrastructure projects and potentially could become a global lender of last
resort to sovereign nations such as Greece. It is almost certain that the AIIB
will begin lending in yuan another phase in the inevitable demise of the
dollar as sole reserve currency and the fulfilment of Chinese ambition to
make the yuan an internationally traded currency . Even the Chinese themselves were
reportedly surprised at their success in attracting key U.S. allies particularly Britain to join the AIIB.
The U.S. had exerted pressure on its allies to eschew the new Asian bank. However, when Washingtons
closest ally Britain broke ranks and announced its application in March it led to a slew of western
countries following suit. It is interesting to note that the World Banks US-appointed President has vowed to
find innovative ways to work with a new Chinese-led global bank, welcoming it as a major new player
in the world. The positive overtures by Jim Yong Kim comes ahead of next weeks World Bank and
International Monetary Fund spring meetings in Washington. It also marks a split with the administration of
U.S. President Barack Obama which put him forward to head the World Bank in 2012. According to the
Financial Times, Chinas success stems from softening of its diplomacy early last year following tensions
with Vietnam with the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel. By the time the APEC conference came

That Britain,
Israel, Australia and Germany have turned a deaf ear to Washington on an
issue that is of such vital strategic importance to the U.S. demonstrates the
shocking degree to which the influence of the U.S. has declined in the past
fifteen years. While Canada and Japan remain on the sidelines for now many believe that it is just a
around China was negotiating agreements and deals with its neighbors, including Japan.

matter of time before they too join the new bank. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers
wrote this week that the failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a
comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. Summers is a U.S. and international
political insider and was Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. Summers worked as the
Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Obama from January
2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama
administrations response to the financial crisis. He was widely tipped as the potential successor to Ben
Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, though after criticism from the left, Obama nominated
Janet Yellen for the position. If the U.S. is to arrest the decline in its influence through the World Bank,
Summers identifies three areas that Washington needs to address. Firstly, in its approach to the wider
world it must rebuild a bipartisan foundation and be free from gross hypocrisy and be restrained in the
pursuit of self-interest. The U.S. needs to apply the same standards to its state regulators, independent
agencies and far-reaching judicial actions that it demands of other countries. He advises against using the
dollar as an aggressive geopolitical tool such as the attempts to suffocate the Iranian economy by

We cannot expect to maintain the dollars

primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about
limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives. Ultimately the new
global institution will help China knock the U.S. off its pedestal as the worlds
pre-eminent economic and military superpower and will likely lead to a
further erosion in trust of the debased dollar as the global reserve currency.
cutting Iran out of the banking system.

The new emerging order should lead to greater geopolitical stability in the long term. The rising economic
power of China seeks to work together financially and economically with both NATO members and indeed
nations currently at odds with American foreign policy such as Russia and Iran. Iran has been accepted as
a founding member of the AIIB. Interestingly, China said that the decision was made by existing members,
including China, Britain, France, India and Italy. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also been accepted.
China and Iran have close diplomatic, economic, trade and energy ties. One would hope that this should
limit the potential for large-scale conflict involving Israel, the U.S. and certain NATO members and the
current black sheep of the international family Iran and Russia. In the shorter term however it may lead
to greater geopolitical tension as the neoconservative influence in Washington continues to labour under
the delusion that the U.S. is still the indispensable nation chosen by history to rule the world unilaterally.

Perversely, the decline in U.S. hegemony especially in the financial and

economic realms may embolden the neo-conservative militarists who appear
desperate to maintain U.S. hegemony at all costs. The clear shift in
economic power from West to East will put further pressure on the dollar. The
recent strong bounce in the dollar will likely be seen as a short term cyclical
bull market within a secular long term bear market. The coming dollar crisis
will impact the currency international monetary system and likely lead to an
international monetary crisis. Global property bubbles, leveraged finance and high risk
securitization were the elephants in the room in the years prior to the start of global financial and
economic crisis in 2007. Many warned but were ignored. There are similar elephants in the room today
which are also being ignored. There is the growing risk of an international monetary crisis due to the real
risks posed to the global reserve currency the dollar and to the not so single currency, the euro.

yesDA Appeasment

Engagement
Rivalry is inevitable expanding economic or political
integration of China assists Chinese ascendancy
Tellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S.
foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international
security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, U.S. Grand Strategy Toward
China, Council on Foreign Relations,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG)

Because the American effort to integrate China into the liberal international
order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asiaand could
eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally
Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on
balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its
ascendancy . This strategy cannot be built on a bedrock of containment, as
the earlier effort to limit Soviet power was, because of the current realities of
globalization. Nor can it involve simply jettisoning the prevailing policy of
integration. Rather, it must involve crucial changes to the current policy in
order to limit the dangers that Chinas economic and military expansion pose
to U.S. interests in Asia and globally.
These changes, which constitute the heart of an alternative balancing
strategy, must derive from the clear recognition that preserving U.S. primacy
in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand
strategy in the twenty-first century. Sustaining this status in the face of rising
Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to
nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States
asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential
trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual
gains through instruments that consciously exclude China ; recreating a
technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from
acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict highleverage strategic harm on the United States and its partners; concertedly
building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on Chinas
periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively
project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese oppositionall
while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its
importance to U.S. national interests.
The necessity for such a balancing strategy that deliberately incorporates
elements that limit Chinas capacity to misuse its growing power, even as the
United States and its allies continue to interact with China diplomatically and

economically, is driven by the likelihood that a long-term strategic rivalry

between Beijing and Washington is high. Chinas sustained economic success
over the past thirty-odd years has enabled it to aggregate formidable power,
making it the nation most capable of dominating the Asian continent and thus
undermining the traditional U.S. geopolitical objective of ensuring that this
arena remains free of hegemonic control. The meteoric growth of the Chinese
economy, even as Chinas per capita income remains behind that of the
United States in the near future, has already provided Beijing with the
resources necessary to challenge the security of both its Asian neighbors and
Washingtons influence in Asia, with dangerous consequences. Even as
Chinas overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth slows considerably in
the future, its relative growth rates are likely to be higher than those of the
United States for the foreseeable future, thus making the need to balance its
rising power important. Only a fundamental collapse of the Chinese state
would free Washington from the obligation of systematically balancing
Beijing, because even the alternative of a modest Chinese stumble would not
eliminate the dangers presented to the United States in Asia and beyond.
Of all nationsand in most conceivable scenariosChina is and will remain
the most significant competitor to the United States for decades to come.6
Chinas rise thus far has already bred geopolitical, military, economic, and
ideological challenges to U.S. power, U.S. allies, and the U.S.-dominated
international order. Its continued, even if uneven, success in the future would
further undermine U.S. national interests. Washingtons current approach
toward Beijing, one that values Chinas economic and political integration in
the liberal international order at the expense of the United States global
preeminence and long-term strategic interests, hardly amounts to a grand
strategy, much less an effective one. The need for a more coherent U.S.
response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue.

L: Cooperation
New substantive acts of cooperation are concessions to
China that embolden nationalists and creates the
widespread perception of US decline
Pickrell 15(Ryan, PhD degree in International Politics and Diplomacy, The
Tipping Point: Has the U.S.-China Relationship Passed the Point of No
Return?, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-tipping-point-has-the-uschina-relationship-passed-the-14168?page=3, 10/26/15, NRG)

Chinas proposed solution to the Sino-American strategic stability issue is the

new model of major-country relations, which encourages the United States
and China to avoid confrontation and conflict, respect one anothers political
systems and national interestsspecifically Chinas core interestsand
pursue win-win cooperation. China is exceptionally enthusiastic about this
proposal and brings it up at every high-level Sino-American meeting. Chinese
enthusiasm for the new model of major-country relations can be explained
in a number of different ways. American acceptance of Chinas proposal
would facilitate Beijings rise, legitimize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
as a leader for national strength and revival and reduce the likelihood of
American containment. As acceptance of the new model of major-country
relations would create an international environment conducive to Chinas
rise, it would essentially allow China to become the preeminent power in Asia
without great power competition or conflict. This proposal also has the
potential to put China on par with the United States, to elevate it to an equal
status, one acknowledged by the United States. Not only would American
recognition of Chinas strength and power have effects abroad, but it would
also stoke Chinese nationalism and strengthen CCP leadership at home.
Furthermore, this new model is a means of establishing a new code of
conduct for the Sino-American relationship that is more in line with Chinese
national interests, opening the door for the creation of a Chinese sphere of
influence in Asia and, potentially, a Sino-centric regional order.
Prior to the recent meeting between Xi Jinping and Barack Obama, Xi
announced that Chinas proposed new model of major-country-relations
would be an important discussion point for the meeting, but, while this
proposal was brought up during the meeting, no clear progress was made.
Because U.S. leaders believe that the new model of major-country relations
is not in Americas best interests, the United States has repeatedly dismissed
Chinas proposal. As the hegemonic power, the United States maintains its
power by dominating global politics; to accept a geopolitical framework
alternative proposed by a strategic rival requires sacrificing a certain amount
of power and influence. Along those same lines, acceptance of Chinas
proposal might give other states in the international system the impression

that the United States is in decline and on the losing end of the classic
Thucydides trap. Outside of traditional power politics, the call for the United
States to respect Chinas core interests as many Chinese and foreign
scholars have notedis a loaded statement. While the United States is not
opposed to respecting a states national interests, it tends to be unwilling to
respect national interests which are highly contested, which is the situation
for the majority of Chinas core interests. In addition to traditional Chinese
national interests, such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, Chinas core
interests also cover most of its territorial claims in Asia. The United States is
concerned that Chinas new model of major-country relations is a ploy
designed to trick the United States into acknowledging Chinas extensive
territorial claims and undercutting the interests of American allies and longtime strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region, which would likely result in
the weakening of the American-led hub-and-spoke security structure, a
security framework China hopes to replace with its New Asian Security
Concept. There are also suspicions in the United States that Chinas proposal
is a call for the creation of spheres of influence, a concept to which the
Obama administration has been consistently opposed.

L: Unconditional concessions
China will pocket concessions from engagement it wont
change behavior and it will become more aggressive
Wolf, 14 - Dr. Albert B. Wolf is an Assistant Professor of International
Relations at ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan (The Unipolar Moment is
(Almost) Over: Whats Next? The Times of Israel, 5/1,
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-unipolar-moment-is-almost-over-what-next/

Lean Forward
This is also known as engagement. Unlike other strategies driven by Who
gets more thinking, under engagement we stop worrying about how big a
slice of the pie China gets, and instead focus upon growing the whole pie.
Under this strategy, we give up none of our commitments. Instead, we take
up new ones. We attempt to influence Chinas present and future behavior
by using positive inducements (carrots), while ensnaring them and us in a
web of increasingly intricate international organizations
Scholars like Alastair Iain Johnston suggest that Chinas participation in
international organizations has had a moderating influence on Beijings
foreign policy since the days of Mao. Jeffrey Legro argues that since Deng
Xiaoping, China has pursued an integrationist strategy that has benefited
its growth. Until outside events demonstrate that its current strategy is not
working or has failed, Chinese elites have little reason to favor a course
correction in a more aggressive direction.
Downsides
Has this ever worked? Some would suggest that engagement has never
worked because declining states rarely try it. Declining powers are wary of
trying it for fear that concessions given to rising powers today will be used
against them in the future. China could pocket concessions and use them
later in order to further Americas demise . China may also see this as little
more than cheap talk: a U.S. ploy to get its way and maintain primacy on the
cheap. After all, such a doctrine does not involve deeper defense cuts than
what we have now.

The history of appeasement has put the US and China on

the brink of war further demonstration of US weakness
means China will be aggressive
Chang, 16 - Chang lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two
decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul

Weiss. He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale,

and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage
Foundation, the Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the
Council on Foreign Relations, and other institutions. He has given briefings at
the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State
Department, and the Pentagon (Gordon, America Will Decide If There Is War
in Asia 6/24, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-will-decide-if-therewar-asia-16720?page=show

Aggressors, like China, start wars. Yet whether historys next great conflict
begins in East Asia will not be determined in the councils of a belligerent
Beijing. If youre trying to set your watch to the sound of gunfire, you must,
most of all, observe Washington.
The region is in seemingly never-ending crisis because Chinese leaders
believe their country should be bigger than it is today. As a result, China is
pushing on boundaries to the south and east, using forceful tactics to both
take territory under the control of others and close off international water and
airspace.
The dynamic of aggression has started, and at this point China will not stop
until it is stopped.
Unfortunately, Washington is in many ways responsible, or at least paved the
way, for the latest round of Chinese provocation. That round began in the
spring of 2012. Then, Chinese and Philippine vessels sailed in close proximity
around Scarborough Shoal, in the northern portion of the South China Sea.
To avoid conflict in that critical body of water, Washington brokered an
agreement between Beijing and Manila. Both agreed to withdraw their craft,
but only the Philippines honored the deal. That left China in control of the
shoal.
Beijings grab was particularly audacious. Scarborough lies just 124 nautical
miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon, guarding the strategic Manila
and Subic Bays. It was long thought to be part of the Philippines.
The Obama administration did not enforce the agreement it had brokered,
perhaps under the belief it could thereby avoid a confrontation with Beijing.
The White Houses inaction just made the problem bigger, however.
Emboldened Chinese officials and flag officers then ramped up pressure on
another Philippine featureSecond Thomas Shoal, where Chinese vessels
have regularly operatedand the Senkakus, eight specks under Japanese
administration in the East China Sea.
You would have thought that Washington policymakers had learned the costly
lessons of earlier eras when Western timidity opened the door to large-scale
conflicts that could have been avoided. Britain and France, for instance,

allowed the Third Reich to remilitarize the Rhineland in March 1936. That
gambit secured one of Germanys frontiers and eventually led to Hitlers
annexation of Austria in March 1938 and his bold grab of the Sudetenland the
following September. Germany, after the infamous Munich pact, took the rest
of Czechoslovakia by the spring of the following year.
In the first half of August 1939 Hitler did not think Britain or France would go
to war over Poland, and its not hard to see why. After all, they did nothing to
stop him when they could have, in the Rhineland. Then they meekly stood by
while he marched into large parts of Europe.
By the latter part of that August the declarations of London and Paris that
they would defend Polish borders sounded hollow and in any event were too
late. German forces crossed the Polish border on September 1, and London
and Paris, likely to Hitlers surprise, declared war on Germany two days later.
Unfortunately, America looks like it is following in the footsteps of Britain and
France. The Peoples Republic of China is not the Third Reich, but the dynamic
in the second half of the 1930s and our era looks eerily similar.
Then and now, an aggressive power seized what it wanted. Chinese leaders
today, like Germanys before, believe further advances will not meet effective
resistance. Moreover, there is at this time, like there was in that decade, a
momentum toward war. Hostile elementsmany but not all of them in
uniformare in control of the levels of power in Beijing, as they were in
Berlin.
This month has seen those elements hit out toward their countrys south and
east. To the continental south, in the Himalayas, Chinese troops intruded into
Indian-controlled territory at four separate spots in the state of Arunachal
Pradesh on the ninth.
To the maritime southeast, a Chinese vessel deliberately rammed a
Vietnamese fishing boat on June 16. And last week about a dozen of Chinas
trawlers fished in Indonesias Exclusive Economic Zone and confronted local
patrol vessels, creating the third such incident in as many months.
Moreover, to Chinas east there was a series of incidents in the East China
Sea. On June 15, a Chinese intelligence ship entered Japans territorial waters
in the dark of early morning, loitering close to two islands off the main
Japanese island of Kyushu. The intrusion was the first since 2004, when a
submerged Chinese submarine transited a strait between two of Japans
islands, and only the second by China since the end of the Second World War.
The incursion followed an incident on June 9 when, for the first time ever, a
Chinese warship, a frigate, entered the contiguous zone off the Senkakus.
This, in turn, followed the June 7 intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135
reconnaissance plane over the East China Sea by two Chinese jets. U.S.
Pacific Command called the Chinese action unsafe.

And this brings us back to Scarborough, which could be as important a

turning point to our era as Sudetenland was to last century. We see some
surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going
on, said Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson to Reuters in the
middle of March. As a result, the shoal could end up a next possible area of
reclamation. Reclamation would make permanent Chinas seizure and
therefore constitute a game-changer if not immediately reversed.
So far, the United States has sent warnings. On April 21, four ground-attack
A-10s flew what the U.S. Air Force termed an air and maritime domain
awareness mission in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal. Then this month in
Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, in
response to a question about Beijings possible reclamation of the shoal,
spoke of actions being taken both by the United States and by actions taken
by others in the region which will have the effect of not only increasing
tensions but also isolating China.
What actions? In late March, the New York Times reported that General
Joseph Dunford was overhead at the Pentagon asking Admiral Harry Harris,
the chief of U.S. Pacific Command, the ultimate question. Would you go to
war over Scarborough Shoals? the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
wanted to know.
So far, very few Americans think Scarborough is worth a fight with the
Chinese, and the White House seems reluctant to start a war anywhere.
Therefore, the risk of conflict over those rocks appears to be extremely low.
Yet, despite appearances, the situation could be dangerous. For one thing,
the Chinese seem determined to do something provocative when the
Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague hands down its ruling in
Republic of Philippines v. Peoples Republic of China. Beijing has refused to
participate in the case that will apply the rules of the U.N. Convention on the
Law of the Sea to South China Sea issues, and most observers expect a
decision favoring Manila in the next month or so.
Chinese leaders could simply decide to show the Philippines whos boss by
ignoring the decision, defying U.S. warnings, and building an artificial island
over the contested Scarborough. Beijing might think it can get away with
such an act, but authoritarian leaders do not have a good track record in
reading American intentions.
Kim Il Sung was sure Washington would not come to the aid of beleaguered
South Korea in June 1950. And at the time it looked like he had correctly read
the Truman administration. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in his January
1950 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, left South Korea
outside Americas announced defensive perimeter. His language, whatever
he intended, appears to have convinced Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin, Kims
backers, that the North Korean was correct in his assessment that the United

States would not fight. In June, Kim attacked in full force, and, despite
everything, an unprepared, outgunned America went to war.
Saddam Hussein made a similar error. In July 1990, April Glaspie, the
American ambassador to Iraq, indicated to him that Washington had little
interest in Arab-Arab conflicts, words he interpreted to mean the U.S. would
not stop him from taking over neighboring Kuwait. The Bush administration
could have prevented a generation of tragedy by making a firm declaration of
resolve during that pivotal conversation. Instead, Saddam invaded and
America had to create a multi-nation coalition and lead a full-scale invasion to
free the oil-rich emirate.
Today, it would be hard for China to predict what would happen if it started to
reclaim Scarborough, in large part because it is not clear that Washington
policymakers themselves know what they would do.
America is now showing resolve in the South China Sea, but its unlikely that,
after the feeble response in the first half of 2012, U.S. officials have
impressed their Chinese counterparts with the depth of their concern. That
makes the situation at this moment extraordinarily dangerous.

L: Crisis management
US crisis management causes crisis escalation because
China thinks the US will back down to every provocation.
Closing communication channels is vital to demonstrating
resolve
Mastro 15-an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A.
Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Why Chinese
Assertiveness is Here to Stay, The Washington Quarterly, 21 Jan 2015,
https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/27434/uploads)//SL italics in original

These efforts are commendablethe United States rightly works to preserve

its military superiority and retain its ability to project power in the region.
During the Cold War, when the greatest pacing threats were land conflicts,
forward deploying U.S. forces in Europe and Asia were sufficient to
demonstrate the credibility of the U.S. commitment to peace in those regions.
But China is currently testing the waters not because its leaders are uncertain
about the balance of power, but because they are probing the balance of
resolve. This means that staying ahead in terms of military might is
insufficient in contemporary East Asia.
Chinas strategists are betting that the side with the strongest military does
not necessarily win the warthe foundation of the deterrent pillar of its
A2/AD strategy. Indeed, Chinas experience in fighting the Korean War proves
that a country willing to sacrifice blood and treasure can overcome a
technologically superior opponent. The belief that balance of resolve drives
outcomes more so than the balance of power is the foundation of Chinas
new, more assertive strategy ; but U.S. responses to date have failed to
account for it. Canned demonstrations of U.S. power fail to address the
fundamental uncertainty concerning U.S. willingness, not ability, to fight.
The U.S. focus on de-escalation in all situations only exacerbates this issue.
The Cold War experience solidified the Western narrative stemming from
World War I that inadvertent escalation causes major war, and therefore crisis
management is the key to maintaining peace.74 This has created a situation
in which the main U.S. goal has been de-escalation in each crisis or incident
with Beijing. But Chinese leaders do not share this mindsetthey believe
leaders deliberately control the escalation process and therefore wars happen
because leaders decide at a given juncture that the best option is to fight.75
China is masterful at chipping away at U.S. credibility through advancing
militarization and coercive diplomacy. It often uses limited military action to
credibly signal its willingness to escalate if its demands are not met.
Strategist Thomas Schelling theoretically captured this approach when he

wrote it is the sheer inability to predict the consequences of our actions and
to keep things under control that can intimidate the enemy.76
Because China introduces risk for exactly this reason, the U.S. focus on
deescalation through crisis management is unlikely to produce any change in
Chinese behaviorif anything it will only encourage greater provocations .
Beijing has identified the U.S. fear of inadvertent escalation, and is exploiting
it to compel the United States to give in to its demands and preferences. In
this way, the U.S. focus on de-escalation may actually be the source of
instability by rewarding and encouraging further Chinese provocations. To
signal to China that the United States will not opt out of a conflict,
Washington must signal willingness to escalate to higher levels of conflict
when China is directly and purposely testing U.S. resolve. This may include
reducing channels of communication during a conflict , or involving additional
regional actors, to credibly demonstrate that China will not be able to use
asymmetry of resolve to its advantage.

Threatening escalation is vital to crisis stability deescalation makes future crises inevitable because it plays
into Chinese strategic thinking
Mastro 15-an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A.
Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Why Chinese
Assertiveness is Here to Stay, The Washington Quarterly, 21 Jan 2015,
https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/27434/uploads)//SL

The current mindsetthat crisis management is the answer in all scenarios

will be difficult to dislodge, given the tendency among U.S. military ranks to
focus on worst-case great battle scenarios. While realistic in Cold War
operational planning, decision makers should consider instead the less violent
and prolonged engagements that characterize Chinese coercive diplomacy
when evaluating risk and reward, such as the 1962 SinoIndian War or the
1974 Battle of the Paracel Islands. The idea that any conflict with China would
escalate to a major war, destroy the global economy, and perhaps even
escalate to a nuclear exchange has no foundation in Chinese thinking, and
causes the United States to concede in even the smallest encounters. While
the Chinese leadership has proven to be more risk-acceptant than the United
States (or perhaps more accurately, to assess the risks to be less than those
perceived by U.S. strategists), Xi still wants to avoid an armed conflict at this
stage. In his November 2014 keynote address at the Central Foreign Affairs
Work Conference, he noted that China remains in a period of strategic
opportunity in which efforts should be made to maintain the benign strategic
environment so as to focus on internal development.77

Ultimately, the U.S. regional objective must be peace and stability at an

acceptable cost. Given this, it is critical to understand the four components of
Chinas A2/AD strategy, the strategic foundation for Chinas recent
assertiveness, and how best to maintain the U.S. position as a Pacific power.
In addition to regularly attending meetings in the region and developing new
technology, new platforms, and new operational concepts designed to defeat
Chinas A2/AD strategy, the United States needs to break free of its Cold Warbased paradigm paralysis and rethink conceptions of limited war, escalation,
and risk.
Scolding China and imposing symbolic costs for each maritime incident is
unlikely to inspire the corrective change U.S. thinkers are hoping for. The
United States needs to fundamentally change its approach by accepting
higher risk and allowing for the possibility of escalationboth vertically in
force as well as horizontally to include other countries. This admittedly is a
difficult balance, especially given the need to avoid emboldening U.S. allies to
take actions that run contrary to U.S. interests. But only by mastering these
two balancing actsfocusing on balancing resolve, rather than forces, and
prioritizing stability over crisis managementwill the United States be able to
maintain peace and stability in East Asia without sacrificing U.S. or allied
interests.

--AT: Growth now

The rate of Chinese growth will determine its ability to
challenge the US
Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago,
co-director of Program of International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can
China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, October 25th,
2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully10204)
The rise of China appears to be changing this situation, however, because
this development has the potential to fundamentally alter the architecture of
the international system. If the Chinese economy continues growing at a brisk
clip in the next few decades, the United States will once again face a
potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return in full force. It
is still an open question as to whether Chinas economy will continue its
spectacular rise or even continue growing at a more modest, but still
impressive, rate. There are intelligent arguments on both sides of this debate,
and it is hard to know who is right.
But if those who are bullish on China are correct, it will almost certainly be
the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century, for
China will be transformed into an enormously powerful country. The
attendant question that will concern every maker of foreign policy and
student of international politics is a simple but profound one: can China rise
peacefully? The aim of this chapter is to answer that question.

--Slow growth key to hegemony

Slowing Chinese economic growth is vital to preserving
US hegemony
Mearsheimer 14 professor of political science at University of Chicago,
co-director of Program of International Security Policy at UChicago (John, Can
China Rise Peacefully, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, October 25th,
2014, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully10204)
There is a small possibility China will eventually become so powerful that the
United States will not be able to contain it and prevent it from dominating
Asia, even if the American military remains forward deployed in that region.
China might someday have far more latent power than any of the four
potential hegemons the United States confronted in the twentieth century. In
terms of both population size and wealththe building blocks of military
powerneither Wilhelmine Germany, nor imperial Japan, nor Nazi Germany,
nor the Soviet Union came close to matching the United States. Given that
China now has more than four times as many people as the United States and
is projected to have more than three times as many in 2050, Beijing would
enjoy a significant advantage in latent power if it had a per capita GNI (gross
national income) equivalent to that of either Hong Kong or South Korea.
All that latent power would allow China to gain a decisive military advantage
over its principal rivals in Asia, especially when you consider that China would
be operating in its backyard, while the Unites States would be operating more
than 6,000 miles from California. In that circumstance, it is difficult to see
how the United States could prevent China from becoming a regional
hegemon. Moreover, China would probably be the more formidable
superpower in the ensuing global competition with the United States.
But even if Chinas GNI does not rise to those levels, and it ends up with not
quite as much latent power as the United States, it would still be in a good
position to make a run at hegemony in Asia. All of this tells us the United
States has a profound interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slow
considerably in the years ahead. That outcome might not be good for
American prosperity, much less for global prosperity, but it would be good for
American security, which is what matters most.

--Slow growth solves Sino-Japan

Chinese economic decline prevents Sino-Japan war and
cements US leadership
Glaser and Funaiole, 15 *senior adviser for Asia and the director of the
China Power Project at CSIS AND fellow with the China Power Project at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (Bonnie and Matthew,
Geopolitical Consequences of Chinas Slowdown 11/16,
http://csis.org/files/publication/151116_Glaser_Funaiole_Geopolitical.pdf
Similarly, Chinas economic slowdown could offer Japan an occasion to gain
leverage in the Sino-Japanese relationship, creating the possibility to tamp
down tensions in the East China Sea and stabilize bilateral ties that remain a
fragile, but critically important, component of the regional security landscape.
Perhaps most significantly, a Chinese economic slowdown affords the United
States an opportunity to buttress its political, economic, and military position
in the Asia-Pacific, and assuage worries that the United States lacks sufficient
strategic vision and political commitment to the region. The outcome relies
on how Washington plays its hand, but the result could be the strengthening
of a rules-based, U.S.-led security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region for
years to come.

yesDA Rising Expectations

L: Unconditional
****Pro tip: read unconditional T (spend a max of 25
seconds on it in the 1nc) and when they say we meet
concede T and read this link in the 2nc hahahhahahah
James****
China will interpret the plan as generating expectations of
future concessions that license Chinese aggression and
cause allied prolif
Erikson, 14 - ANDREW S. ERICKSON is an Associate Professor at the U.S.
Naval War College and an Associate-in-Research at Harvard Universitys
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. ADAM P. LIFF is Assistant Professor of
East Asian International Relations at Indiana Universitys School of Global and
International Studies, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and
the World Program, and Associate-in-Research at Harvards Fairbank Center
and Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (Not-So-Empty Talk: The
Danger of China's New Type of Great-Power Relations Slogan 10/9,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2014-10-09/not-so-empty-talk

The Obama administrations continued flirtation with the new type of greatpower relations concept appears to have been misunderstood in Beijing and
beyond, and risks being misperceived as a precipitous change in U.S. power
and policy.
First, the terminology paints an absurd picture of a United States too feeble to
articulate, much less defend, its own vision for promoting peace, stability,
and prosperity in Asia -- only furthering perceptions of U.S. decline in China
and its neighbors. The Obama administrations rhetoric, however well
intentioned, sometimes exacerbates this misperception. A case in point:
Kerrys statement to his Chinese counterparts at the 2014 U.S.-China
Strategic and Economic Dialogue that there is no U.S. strategy to try to push
back against or be in conflict with China. The Obama administration is
certainly right to try to allay concerns -- unfounded but extremely prevalent
in China -- that the United States is attempting to contain China. But it is ill
advised to do so in a manner so easily heard as an apology.
Second, Beijings interpretation of new type of great-power relations
appears to be linked to an assumption that Chinas growing material power
has made a power transition inevitable, compelling Washington to
accommodate Beijings claims in the South and East China Seas now. Such
arguments reveal ignorance, first, of fundamental changes to the
international order since the days of might makes right and, second, of the

manifold sources of U.S. power and preeminence. By allowing the terms

great-power relations and equality to permeate official discourse on
bilateral relations, Washington risks tacitly condoning such anachronistic
views of international politics.
Third, Chinas economic growth is slowing, and the countrys future is ever
more uncertain as various societal and other domestic headwinds strengthen.
Decades of extraordinary economic and military growth make many Chinese
assume that the rapid increases in material power will continue indefinitely.
That is unlikely, but the consequences of such bullishness are real and
unsettling: growing expectations within China for U.S. concessions and
anachronistic calls for equal treatment and space.
If that werent enough, the new type of great-power relations concept is
also unnerving to U.S. allies and partners in the region. If fears of
abandonment grow, some may seek other -- potentially more destabilizing -options for deterring China.
Such concerns are particularly intense in Japan -- arguably Washingtons
closest ally and the best situated to stand up to China independently, if
necessary. Xi has already attempted to exploit the Obama administrations
embrace of the new type of great-power relations concept to score a victory
in the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands dispute. During a September 2012 meeting
with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Xi invoked the important
consensus he claimed that the two had reached in defining their relationship
and then pivoted immediately to the most critical flashpoint in ChineseJapanese relations: We hope that the U.S., from the point of view of regional
peace and stability, will be cautious, will not get involved in the Diaoyu
Islands sovereignty dispute, and will not do anything that might intensify
contradictions and make the situation more complicated. The record of
Chinas Japan policy during the past two years suggests the Xi administration
is intent on isolating Japan -- bypassing Tokyo while engaging Washington -and keeping the country relegated to a status inferior to China and the United
States. Indeed, as Australian scholar Amy King argues, Chinas conception of
a new type of great-power relations leaves little room for Japan.

China will pocket concessions from unconditional

engagement it wont change behavior and it will become
more aggressive
Wolf, 14 - Dr. Albert B. Wolf is an Assistant Professor of International
Relations at ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan (The Unipolar Moment is
(Almost) Over: Whats Next? The Times of Israel, 5/1,
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-unipolar-moment-is-almost-over-what-next/

Lean Forward

This is also known as engagement. Unlike other strategies driven by Who

gets more thinking, under engagement we stop worrying about how big a
slice of the pie China gets, and instead focus upon growing the whole pie.
Under this strategy, we give up none of our commitments. Instead, we take
up new ones. We attempt to influence Chinas present and future behavior
by using positive inducements (carrots), while ensnaring them and us in a
web of increasingly intricate international organizations
Scholars like Alastair Iain Johnston suggest that Chinas participation in
international organizations has had a moderating influence on Beijings
foreign policy since the days of Mao. Jeffrey Legro argues that since Deng
Xiaoping, China has pursued an integrationist strategy that has benefited
its growth. Until outside events demonstrate that its current strategy is not
working or has failed, Chinese elites have little reason to favor a course
correction in a more aggressive direction.
Downsides
Has this ever worked? Some would suggest that engagement has never
worked because declining states rarely try it. Declining powers are wary of
trying it for fear that concessions given to rising powers today will be used
against them in the future. China could pocket concessions and use them
later in order to further Americas demise . China may also see this as little
more than cheap talk: a U.S. ploy to get its way and maintain primacy on the
cheap. After all, such a doctrine does not involve deeper defense cuts than
what we have now.

Conditional engagement is vital to Chinas peaceful rise

Erikson, 14 - ANDREW S. ERICKSON is an Associate Professor at the U.S.
Naval War College and an Associate-in-Research at Harvard Universitys
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. ADAM P. LIFF is Assistant Professor of
East Asian International Relations at Indiana Universitys School of Global and
International Studies, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and
the World Program, and Associate-in-Research at Harvards Fairbank Center
and Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (Not-So-Empty Talk: The
Danger of China's New Type of Great-Power Relations Slogan 10/9,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2014-10-09/not-so-empty-talk

The U.S.-Chinese relationship is too important to leave up to a vague slogan

rooted in a cynical nineteenth-century premise: that the two countries must
do something historically unprecedented to avoid war. In the twenty-first
century, an effective international order hinges on powerful states supporting
an inclusive, equitable, win-win system that has the same rules for the strong
and the weak. Might can no longer make right.

That is why the Obama administration should immediately replace the new
type of great-power relations formulation with a specific, reciprocal , resultsoriented, and positive vision -- one that accords China international status in
proportion to its active support for the international order that has greatly
benefited China over the past four decades. There is precedent for such a
framework, most notably the Bush administrations 2005 call for China to be
a responsible stakeholder. Such an approach not only welcomes Chinas
peaceful rise but also explicitly charts a pathway to its coveted status as a
great power.
Starting now, U.S. policy and rhetoric should build on Chinas desire for
membership in the great-power club by setting goals for increased
contributions to the international system and greater provision of public
goods. Washington must also disabuse Beijing of the notion that it can
negotiate with the United States over the heads of Chinas less great
neighbors and emphasize that, to be a true twenty-first-century great power,
Beijing must follow its own Golden Rule and treat other countries as it wants
to be treated. Disputes with smaller neighbors are an excellent opportunity
for Chinese leaders to show the world what their self-professed vision of
democracy in international relations actually means in practice.
Above all, the United States must not give tacit approval to a Chinese
shortcut to great-power status out of exaggerated fear of inevitable conflict.
It must approach Beijing from a position of strength . Like Washington, Beijing
has powerful incentives to avoid a military clash. It enjoys tremendous
benefits from trading partners across the Asia-Pacific -- in particular, the
United States and Japan -- and relies on exports to sustain its national
development and domestic stability. Washington need not accept
disproportionate responsibility for avoiding conflict.
To be sure, explicit rejection of a major foreign policy formulation crafted by
Chinas preeminent ruler may have costs. But the costs of continued
acceptance will only be higher. At a minimum, to avoid validating new type
of great-power relations Washington should immediately cease using the
phrase. If the U.S. government does use the term, it must always follow with
a forceful, explicit definition of what new type of great-power relations is
and what it is not. Washington should also call out aspects of Chinas current
behavior -- namely its coercion of its neighbors and apparent efforts to
undermine U.S. alliances and key international norms -- as antithetical to both
U.S. interests and Beijings coveted recognition as a great power. That should
convince Beijing that even considering division of the Asia-Pacific into spheres
of interests is a nonstarter.
Given its political system, history, and deep realpolitik traditions, Beijings
resistance to Washingtons socialization efforts is hardly surprising. China will
not do everything the United States wants, and some Chinese observers will
cynically interpret U.S. attempts to reformulate the relationship as a ploy to
burden China and contain its rise. And that is why Washington must be

patient as it provides a consistent focal point for Chinese leaders pursuit of

great-power status, strengthening the hand of moderates and
internationalists in domestic policy debates. Chinas growing (and U.S.encouraged) contributions to peacekeeping and antipiracy have been rightly
lauded. Greater contributions in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
and sea-lane security should be as well.
LAST CHANCE
To its credit, in recent months, the Obama administration has gotten tougher
with Beijing. Finally realizing that China was controlling the narrative, the
administration has publicly opposed Beijings destabilizing policies, restated
unambiguously Washingtons support for Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Mutual
Security Treaty, criticized the mishandled November 2013 rollout of Chinas
East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone, and publicly questioned the
basis for Chinas overexpansive, vague South China Sea claims.
This increasingly firm rhetoric is laudable but insufficient. Without more
attention and support from key administration principals, the rebalance risks
being seen in the region as more words than action -- ironic, given the similar
criticism that U.S. officials have leveled at the new type of great-power
relations formulation. Since the Asia-Pacific Rebalance is a major component
of Obamas foreign policy legacy, it is especially puzzling that the
administration has not articulated a formal strategy for the region. As a first
step, the administration should promptly communicate a positive, concrete
vision for the Asia-Pacifics future and Chinas role in it. To guide further U.S.
action and signal resolve, this should then be codified in a formal policy
document, released in conjunction with a major speech by Kerry or by Obama
himself.
None of this is to deny the role of material power in shaping Chinas
trajectory. As China expert Thomas Christensen has argued, the United
States military presence in the Asia-Pacific and its focus on solidifying ties
with regional allies and partners are not only hedges against possible Chinese
provocations but also important means for influencing Beijings foreign policy
decision-making. Indeed, the story of Chinas rise remains incomplete. No
doubt, were in a rough patch today. But despite widespread claims to the
contrary, nothing about Chinas future course -- and certainly not military
conflict -- is predetermined. How things play out will depend on the choices
made by leaders in many countries, but especially in Beijing and Washington.
The so-called Thucydides Trap to the contrary, history tells us that the
trajectories of rising powers can be shaped in powerful ways by the leading
powers behavior and rhetoric. And on those terms, new type of great-power
relations is a deeply flawed concept. The United States must jettison it and
replace it with one that charts a clear pathway for the type of twenty-firstcentury great power that the United States wants China to become. A more
effective vision for U.S.-Chinese relations should be positive and aspirational,

designed to shape Beijings decision-making by tying Chinas eventual

attainment of great-power status to behaving like a twenty-first-century great
power, including by making positive contributions to international peace,
stability, prosperity, and especially by behaving responsibly toward its
neighbors. That would in effect be a truly new type of great-power relations -and Washington must consistently lead by example. For many, U.S. Asia
policy is directly linked to Obamas legacy. Yet his administration is
increasingly focused elsewhere, with real-world consequences. For the
Obama administrations China policy, its time for proactive leadership.

Concessions embolden Chinese aggression only strict

conditions on behavior check appeasement
Newsham, 14- Senior Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic
Studies (Grant, China, America and the "Appeasement" Question, The
National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/china-america-theappeasement-question-11226)//JS

US policy towards China over the last 30 years, and particularly in recent
times, seems familiar. The United States does its best to understand the
PRCs concerns and its resentments going back to the Opium Wars and the
century of humiliation, to accommodate these resentments, and to ensure
China does not feel threatened. Defense and State Department officials
enthusiastically seek greater transparency and openness especially in the
military realm as such openness is perceived as inherently good.
In return, the PRC is expected to change, to show more respect for human
rights and international law and to become a responsible stakeholder in the
international community.
We now have several decades of empirical evidence to assess this
concessionary approach. It has not resulted in improved, less aggressive PRC
behavior in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, or even in outer
space. Indeed, it seems to have encouraged Chinese assertiveness as
manifest in threatening language and behavior towards its neighbors.
Nor has the PRC regime shown more respect for human rights, rule of law,
consensual government or freedom of expression for its citizens. Serial
intellectual property theft continues unabated, as does support for unsavory
dictators.
Nonetheless, we invite the PRC to military exercises and repeat the
engagement mantra expecting that one day things will magically
improve. Some argue that letting the PRC see US military power will dissuade
it from challenging us. Perhaps, but we are just as likely to be seen as nave
or weak. From the Chinese perspective, there is no reason to change since

they have done very well without transforming and the PRC has never been
stronger. Indeed, the PRC frequently claims that human rights, democracy,
and the like are outmoded Western values having nothing to do with China.
This is also demoralizing our allies, who at some point may wonder if they
should cut their own deals with the PRC.
Some revisionist historians argue that Neville Chamberlains 1930s era
appeasement was in fact a wise stratagem to buy time to rearm. This
overlooks that even as late as 1939 when Hitler seized all of Czechoslovakia,
the Western democracies still had the military advantage. One can appease
oneself into a corner. And the beneficiary of the appeasement usually
strengthens to the point it is too hard to restrain without great sacrifice.
One worries that the Chinese seizure of Philippine territory at Scarborough
Shoal in 2012 and the US Governments unwillingness to even verbally
challenge the PRC - might turn out to be this generations Rhineland. Had
the West resisted Hitler in 1936 when he made this first major demand, there
would have been no World War II, no Holocaust, and no Cold War.
Our choice about how to deal with the PRC is not simply between either
appeasement or treating China as an enemy. Our policy must accommodate
options ranging from engagement to forceful confrontation.
Who would not be delighted with a China that stopped threatening its
neighbors and followed the civilized worlds rules? While ensuring we and our
allies have a resolute defense both in terms of military capability and the
willingness to employ it it is important to maintain ties and dialogue with
the PRC and to provide encouragement and support when it shows clear signs
of transforming to a freer, less repressive society.
We should constantly stress that China is welcome as a key player in the
international order but only under certain conditions . The US and other
democratic nations have not done enough to require China to adhere to
established standards of behavior in exchange for the benefits of joining the
global system that has allowed the PRC to prosper.
Human nature and history are a useful guide to where appeasement (by
whatever name) leads. And they also show that a strong defense and
resolutely standing up for ones principles is more likely to preserve peace.

yesK Pan/Security

L Economic and Diplomatic Engagement

Affs realist comprehension of economic power
is reductionist and intensifies tensions, making conflict
inevitable
Pan,14-- a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University
and educated at Peking University and the Australian National University
(Dr.ChengxinPan, Rethinking Chinese Power: A Conceptual Corrective to the
Power Shift Narrative, Asian Perspective, July-September 2014, Vol. 38, No.
3, pp. 387-410)//ER
China may be the most complex and paradoxical rising power in modern
international history, as reflected in various paradigms and lenses employed to try to make sense
of it (Pan 2012).Thepowershiftnarrativeis one such lens; itprovides a seemingly
convincing identity statement about a China that , while still lacking in superpower
status,no longer quite fits into the category of developing countries. This
narrative alsoallows us to reducethe many complextransnational
issuesand challenges thatdo not have a single national origin to the
familiar problems associated with international power
transition.Overallit reflects a particular spatial mindset andgeopolitical
imagination that keeps recycling the age-old metanarrative of a realist
worldwhere power struggle is a constant reality andwhere the rise and fall of great powers not
onlyunset-tlesthe balance of power but more often than not results in the tragedy of great power
politics (Mearsheimer2001). In doing so,the

power-shiftnarrative betrays the lack

of serious reconceptualization of power.Given the inherently social and
relational nature of power itselfas well as thechanging global political,
economic, and normative structures,we must understand the alleged power
shift from the United States to China through a more complex and nuanced
perspective of power.Byassuming that power continues to be attached to the
state as measurable capabilities, and thattodays power shift necessarily
resembles shifts of the past, we risk employing old tools to tackle new
problems. Here it is appropriate to invoke Chinese history and recent US foreign policy to illustrate
howa failure toreconceptualizepower can lead to grave strategic calamities .
For morethan a millennium,Chinese rulers closely watched their interior continental
frontiers for signs ofachallengeto their power. The fact that such a challenge
could come from a new direction (the coast)and in a different form(naval
power)never occurred to them. Yet when that new form of power arrived on its shores, the
Qing dynasty found itself vastly ill-equipped to cope with it. The rest is
history.The recent example is the false unipolar moment assessment of US
power and its attendant neoconservative policy during the George W. Bush
period(Reus-Smit 2004). Ifthe neoconservative faith in the unipolar
moment of US power is misguided, the US decline and power-shift
discourses may be equally mistaken. Yet, to the extent that power is socially
constructed,the powerful conventional discourse of a classic power transition
from the United States to China could have profound practical implications for
this important relationship. AsBreslin(2009, 818) notes, A key source of Chinese power is the
assumption by others that it either has it . . . or, maybe more correctly, that it will have this power and
influencesome timesoon. Whether this discursively constructed Chinese power matches reality is beside
the point, forChina

and other powers both may act on the basis of such a

projected power shift(Hagstrm2012). In China, it might well play into popular nationalism or
encourage arrogance and assertiveness in its foreign policy, or both. In the West, it
wouldjustify a policy of hedging against an ostensibly rising Chinese
power,a policy that in turncould harden Chinas resolve to further
amass power.In this sense,the conventional construction of Chinese
power could well create a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy.

Otherization is essential to the Affs language of

opportunity -- justifying Western exploitation
Pan, 12 Senior Lecturer of International Relations at Deakin University
(Chengxin, Knowledge, Desire, and Power in Global Politics: Western Representations
of Chinas Rise. p. 56-57) // AK

At first sight the 'China opportunity' paradigm sounds more positive than the
'China threat' discourse. It does not, for example, treat China as fundamentally different or
threatening. Whilst some 'China opportunity' advocates remain wary about the Chinese regime
and its long-term strategic ambition, most are optimistic about the Chinese people and
the various opportunities the country has to offer. Indeed, for Edward Friedman, such
positive representations constitute a break with 'a long-discredited Eurocentric "othering" that
distinguishes the good West from all the bad rest'. True, to distinguish the good West from the bad China is

Yet, depicting China as an opportunity (for the West)

does not necessarily mean a deviation from Eurocentrism. The construction of
Otherness, as noted before, is not so much about treating others as threats per se as it
is about the employment of such discursive tactics as imposition, reduction,
and denial when it comes to understanding others' subjectivities. On this account,
there is little improvement in the paradigmatic shift from the 'China threat' to
the 'China opportunity. Consider, for example, the enthusiastic portrayal of
China as a modern-day El Dorado made up of 'one billion customers. Though a
seemingly true and innocuous assessment, it reduces China to [an] huge yet
impersonalized market, with a billion faceless customers and easy-to-control
cheap labour. In short, China is little more than 'an outlet for American
commerce and investment. The diversity and richness of Chinese geography,
history, humanity and subjectivity matters little, if at all. The only hint of Western
probably a case of 'othering'.

historical sensitivity over China is manifested in the updating of the customer numbers from '400 million'

In order for China to be seen as an

opportunity, this Othering (objectification) of China as a market is not accidental,
but appears essential. Otherwise, the sheer number of the Chinese population could instead stir
in the 1930s to a current round-up figure of 'one billion'.

up fear. As one of the Cold War architects George F. Kennan explained in J948 with regard to Asia more
generally: We have about 50%, of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is
particularly great ... between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the
object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern for relationships
which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national
security. Therefore, the imagination of China as a market is a necessary fantasy in place of an otherwise

Seen through an
'opportunity' lens, China can remain an attractive but passive Other, ready to
be explored and exploited. This Othering tendency has, for example, enabled
the West to take China's WTO entry as almost exclusively a matter of
improving [Western] access to China's markets, not enhancing Chinese
access to other markets. Just as the 'China threat paradigm deprives the Chinese of any security
looming danger of the 'envy and resentment' from its vast population.

concern of their own, so the emphasis on China as a fabled market'/'the world's workshop' primarily about
keeping China as a place to which 'our access, as a country and as individual citizens, is free and
comfortable. This quote, originally expressed by a senior economist from the RAND Corporation in the
1960s, captured a longstanding sexualized colonial desire of turning the colonized society into an
accessible, feminized object. Such desire was clearly evident in the remarks by a top-ranking member of
the American business community on the China opportunity: we are talking about the future of e-

commerce, the biggest business innovation of our time in China, the biggest market in the world. and
that gives me a hard-on! And I was it to give you a hard-on too!!

L Generic
Chinese threat and opportunity reps are products of
fear theyre only attempts at Western control over
Chinese uncertainty
Pan 12 -Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of
Humanities and Social Sciences Deakin University (Chengxin, Knowledge,
Desire and Power in Global Politics, p. 16) //CM
emotional substitutes for certainty, fears and fantasies have figured
prominently in what Robert Young calls colonial desire, which regulates
colonialists encounters with and their knowledge of various unfamiliar
Others. These emotions together make up an ambivalent double gesture of
repulsion and attraction towards the colonised . 76 On the one hand, colonial desire
finds people of other races and colours disgusting and repulsive, hence an
object of fear and paranoia. At the same time, colonial desire projects onto
those (same) people some degree of beauty, attractiveness or desirability,
77 thus making them an exotic source of fantasy and wonder. According to Homi
Bhabha, underlying such ambivalent structures of feeling is precisely the modern
desire for certainty, identity and a pure origin.78 Thanks to this ever-present modern
As

desire, the aforementioned ambivalent colonial stereotype is able to acquire its currency and ensure[s]
its repeatability in changing historical and discursive conjunctures. In this sense, Orientalism is best seen

What this latent

form of Orientalist knowledge reveals is not something concrete or objective
about the Orient, but something about the Orientalists themselves, their
recurring, latent desire of fears and fantasies about the Orient . Indeed, only when
as the site of dreams, images, fantasies, myths, obsessions and requirements.79

imbued with such unconscious but persistent desire can Orientalism get passed on silently, without
comment, from one text to another.80 Western knowledge of Chinas rise is precisely such a text that has
been caught up in the silent emotive current. For example, the China threat paradigm bears the stamp of
fears, whereas the China opportunity paradigm can be best seen as manifestations of modern fantasies.
These emotions about Chinas rise are certainly not identical to the Orientalist colonial desire in the
nineteenth century. For instance, the overtly sexual/racial connotation that once was a hallmark of old-

What used to be
some of the main obsessions in European colonial fears and fantasies, such
as miscegenation and racial hybridity, have now been repackaged as issues
of multiculturalism, norm diffusion, socialisation, and so forth. Still, a similar
structure of colonial desire lives on; even the racial facet has not disappeared
completely in contemporary China watching. 81 Thus, to better understand the
twin China paradigms, we need to put them in the context of (neo)colonial
desire, and ask how they have more to do with the Wests latent quest for
certainty and identity than with the manifest search for empirical truth about
Chinese reality. If all social knowledge is yoked to some intertextuality and worldliness, much of the
style colonial desire is no longer prevalent in contemporary writings on China.

worldliness of the threat and opportunity discourses of China is then made up of the (renewed) fears
and fantasies accompanying the Western modern desire and self-imagination.

Viewing China as an opportunity and a threat to be fixed

reifies historic orientalist thinking.
Pan 12 Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of
Humanities and Social Sciences Deakin University (Chengxin, Knowledge,
Desire and Power in Global Politics, p. 39) //CM
In the scholarly community, the bifocal lens is equally palpable . As mentioned above,
on the one hand, Johnston perceives a China threat through an analysis of Chinese strategic culture, but on the other
hand, he seems to believe in the malleability of Chinese interests and identity through socialization drawing on a
constructivist approach, he in fact sees no contradiction between these two arguments. Nor do William Kristol and Robert

just
as the missionaries enthusiasm for the salvation of the Chinese heathens was
often prompted by the very belief in the Chinese as great sinners , Kristol and
Kagans hope for Chinas political transformation is made more imperative not
despite, but precisely because of their fear of China as a political and military
threat. Indeed, it is now difficult to find a work which does not treat China as both a challenge and an opportunity,
Kagan find it incompatible to believe at once in the China threat and in its opportunity for regime change. In a way,

even though most would lean towards one or the other end of the spectrum.

The hidden justification for Western engagement with

China is Orientalist and depicts East-Asia as an object of
study, justifying neo-colonial and imperialist violence
Martnez-Robles,8-- Lecturer, Department of Languages and Cultures
(UOC) and Department of Humanities (DavidMartnez-Robles, The Western
Representation of Modern China: Orientalism, Culturalism and
Historiographical Criticism,Digithum, May 2008,
http://www.uoc.edu/digithum/10/dt/eng/martinez.pdf)/ER
This perception gave birth to theSinophilethought of the 17th and early 18th centuries, which boasted representatives of
the intellectual stature of Leibniz, Wolff, Rousseau and Voltaire, who, in their works, praised very diverse aspects of the
Chinese world, such as the language, the political system and education. In their works, China became a country
governed by a philosopher king with the assistance of literati who are selected by taking into consideration nothing more
than their intellectual and moral standing. The respect for laws, the tolerance in ideas and the political excellence are
virtues that eclipse the shortcomings which, nevertheless, did not go unnoticed by some of these thinkers. However,
circumstances changed radically in the second half of the 18th century, in both Europe and China, and the Western

portrayal of the Chinese world underwenta radicalvolte-face . On the one hand, the
method of the Jesuits of fitting in with Chinese culture was stronglycriticisedby the other orders, giving rise to the socalled Rites Controversy:theSociety of Jesus ended up being dissolved by the Papacy, and the less tolerant Catholic
orders expelled by the Chinese emperor. Meanwhile, in Europe the ideas ofrationalism

gave way to
thecrystallisationof the enlightened thought of modernity , with its faith in
progress.Leibniz and Voltaire were concerned withshowing theuniversality of
reasonand Chinawas an ideal exampleof their proposals . Yet, from this point on,
enlightenedEuropeans submitted China to their ideas on historical progress: the
stability that had previously been interpreted as an example of the virtues of
its political system would become regardedfrom the mid-18th century onwardsas asign of
itslack ofevolution andmodernity.4 One of the most classic formulations of thisSinophobicthought is seen in J.
G. Herder, who in his Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1787) said: The [Chinese] empire is an
embalmed mummy painted with hieroglyphics and wrapped in silk; its internal life is like that of animals in hibernation
(XIV, p. 13).5For

Herder, Chinese cultureis one thathas not evolved for centuries,

the vestiges of a distant past,a country without a present ,like Egyptian hieroglyphics,
which belong to a dead culture. Andit wasthis stereotyped visionthat, reproduced and
amended,resonated throughoutthe work of mostEuropean intellectuals at the
end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, from Adam Smith to Marx. However, the one who best defined it
was Hegel in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (1840), in which he dedicated an entire section to
China.Hegel

feels that China represents the starting point of the history of

humanity, in a formulation that we can consider one of the intellectual bases

of the Orientalist representation of Asia : The History of the World travels from East to West; for
Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia is the beginning (Hegel, 2004, p. 13). And he adds: Early do we see China
advancing to the condition in which it is found at this day; for [] every change is excluded, and the fixedness of a

character which recurs perpetually takes the place of what we should call the truly historical. Chinaand Indialie, as it
were, stilloutside

the Worlds History, as themerepresupposition of elements

whose combination must be waited for to constitute vital progress . (Hegel, 2004, p.
29)Hegel clearly defines the mechanisms of representation of the Chinese
world and East Asia, which remained in force for many decades: China is an
empire that remains outside historical processes, with neither evolution nor progress,inert,
passive and unable to assume Western modernity by itself. And it is the West that can make
the Chinese emerge from this lethargy.The Western world, therefore,becomes afactor
anecessaryand sufficientfactor in the transformation of East Asian countries,
which becomes the intellectual justification forthecolonial actions ofthe great
Euro-American powers in the Pacificand Asia. All the texts which , from the second
half of the 19th century,attempt toanalysethe modern history of China share this
epistemological paradigm, which turned China into an apprentice of thecivilisinglessons of Western
countries.6Chinaand East Asia in general is always described as the passiveand femininepart in the
relationship it has with thecivilisedand masculineWest(Guarn, 2005). And it is from this
perspective that, in the colonial context of the nineteenth century,the Chinese are described as
inferior and barbarous, narrow-minded and xenophobic . This is how one of the few texts of
the time published in Spain about China describes them, introducing the Fu Manchu stereotype that first literature and
then cinema would feed off for decades: Elcarcter[of the
Chinese]enlaaparienciaesmuyafable,humanoymodesto;enrealidadsonvengativosycrueles.Son muy ceremoniosos y
corteses, y sobre todo observadores exactos de sus leyes, sobre lo cual se vela con mucha severidad; su genio y talento
son vivos, espirituosos, animados y penetrantes, y poseen ms que ninguna otra nacin el arte de disimular sus
sentimientos y deseo de venganza, guardando tan bien todas las apariencias de humildad que se los cree insensibles a
todo gnero de ultrajes; pero si se les presenta la ocasin de destruir a su enemigo, se aprovechan de ella con ahnco y
precipitacin hasta lo sumo.(lvarez, 1857, pp. 93-94)7 Despite everything, critical

voices could be heard

regarding the colonial actions in East Asia, which attempted to overcome this
strongly Eurocentric, even racist, viewand during the last decades of the 19th century and first
decades of the 20than effort was made to transform China into an object of
academic study. Oxford University, to offer a distinguished example, was the first to offer Chinese classes in
1876.8 The first lecturer was JamesLegge, a Protestant missionary who led an ambitious translation project of the great
Chinese classics and is the embodiment of the erudite Western figure who approaches Chinese culture with honesty and
passion.9 These firstSinologists, despite the fact that they do not actively participate in the colonial intellectualism
defined by Said, dounconsciously

assume the epistemological categoriesthat drive

the colonial discussion of the age in which they lived . It is significant, for example, that the
renowned translation byLeggeof the Chinese classics should be financed by Joseph Jardine, a member of one of the most
important British merchant clans working in China in the 19th century, whose fortune was linked directly to the lucrative
opium trade.

Affs claim that a western-influenced China rise will solve

conflict perpetuates Sinological orientalism because it
presupposes the US intervention is necessary to make
China civilized and liberal this is just another
manifestation of historical missionary Otherization and
colonialism
Vukovich 5

Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong (Daniel F., Sinological-Orientalism, The
production of the Wests post-Mao China, p. 1-5) //CM
In Orientalism Now, the concluding chapter of Edward Saids great work of imaginative geography from 1978, we are left with the migration
of orientalism from European empires and philology to the U.S. imperium and the dominance of social scientific discourse. This project begins
where Said left off. It argues that

there is a new, Sinological form of orientalism at work in

the world, one that takes as its object an Other that since the 1970s has occupied an increasingly
central, paramount place within the world system and within Western minds or intellectual-political culture: the Peoples
Republic of China. As with Saids formulation based on the Middle East and South Asia, Sinologicalorientalism and its production of a textual China works to help constitute
the identity or Self of the West (or what Balibar calls the Westem-Christian- Democratic-Universalist identity)
(Difference 30). The West, and the U.S. in particular, is what China is not, but which
the latter must, and will someday become. So, too, it is part of a geo-political
project: not just the accumulation of knowledge about an area and the production of a discursive formation ensconcing it, but the
would-be management and administration of the area for economic and
political benefit. But whereas orientalism in Said turned upon a posited, essential difference between Orient and Occident (as in
Kiplings famous verse: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet), the new form turns upon
sameness or more specifically, upon Chinas becoming sameness. China is
seen as in a process of haltingly but inevitably becoming-the-same as us:
open, liberal, modem, free. Put another way, China is understood as
becoming generally equivalent to the West. When one recalls the Marxist analysis of
capital as such, namely as an historical force of abstraction that makes unlike
things (their use-values) alike on the basis of some third thing called the
value-form (their exchange value or general equivalent), then the
relationship between this orientalism and global capitalism - a relationship by and large
unexplored in Said and those is his wake appears in sharper relief. Sinological-orientalism is in an
important sense a capital-logic, just as capital or historical capitalism betrays
an orientalist one. This is no doubt a totalizing, functionalist argument. But then, so is the thing. That is also to say that the
historical conditions of possibility for Sinological-orientalism, this last itself a constituent part of globalization as much as the West itself is, are
the momentous, if not (counter-) revolutionary changes within China itself - its Dengist era of reform and opening up dating from 1979 - and
the Wests economic, political and discursive response to this, that is, its paradoxically supportive and antagonistic (or Tove-hate) relationship

This paradoxical relationship is captured in the

figure or logic of becoming-sameness: China is still and has not been normal
(and has been tragically different), but is engaged in a universal process
such that it will, and must, become the same as us. It is perhaps inherently foolhardy to offer
to the P.R.C.s rise to centrality within the world system.

periodizations by means of dates, but there nonetheless seems to be a consensus within studies of globalization and the contemporary world
system that the 1970s loom large today. Something changed then, even if the triumph of neo-liberalism, conservatism and the
commodification of everything (as Wallerstein likes to put it) appeared only later. Even as the Vietnamese people were defeating and
humiliating the U.S. armed forces, historical communism turns 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission. out to have been in its final throes, succumbing to its internal contradictions - its inability to institutionalize
egalitarian growth and mass participation - and to the pressures of capital accumulation on a world-scale. David Harvey famously posited the
floating of the dollar at Bretton Woods in 1972, and so the financialization of the globe (where modernity is rooted in industrial capital and
postmodemity in financial capital), as a benchmark for the full-on emergence of the condition of postmodemity or the seachange in cultural
as well as political-economic practices that we know as contemporary capitalism (Condition vii). Harveys text remains a rich and rewarding
one, not least because it connected the culture of postmodemity to a global history, albeit an abstract and Eurocentric one (and one he has
since de-provincialized).1 In the event, postmodernism - as a contested term and field of study - turns out to have been something like the
latest fashion he originally thought it to be, and it has dissolved itself into a new field of globalization or global studies. Or put another
way, postmodernism - as both a field and a material, social reality - has evolved into globalization or globality, and it is this shift in history
and academic focus that Harveys book implicitly maps. I will return in a later chapter to the de facto insertion of postmodernism - defined in
this case as post-structuralism - into current studies of globalization and the place of China within them. But from postmodernism to
globalization, 2005: we are still working within the same sea-change of the 1970s. What Harvey identified as the central dynamics of
capitalism - the force of abstraction and reification generated by the value-process, the compression of geographic space (and time) as capital
expands across the globe - are still with us, only more so. (Who could have imagined, in 1972 - the moment of the P.R.C.-U.S. rapprochement -that the products of Chinese labor, from McDonalds Happy Meals toys to the a-historical epic films of Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, would
flood the Euro-American markets and social imaginary?) And these forces are of course not unknown in China, just as the P.R.C. is fully part of
the capitalist world system, the percentage of its economy less socialist or state-owned than that of France. The decades since Bretton Woods,
then, have known a confluence of capital, China, and Sino-Westem relations and flows, and it is this era to which Sinological-orientalism
corresponds (as well as to transformations within inter-Asia, unfortunately beyond the scope of the present study). In so far as it may obtain,
this argument the close, functional, articulated relationship between capital and this new orientalism - has consequences for both a
postcolonial studies that sees only discontinuity between orientalism or colonial discourse and capitalism, and for a Marxism that has yet to
de-Cold War and de-provincialize, or to re-orient itself to the centrality of Asia and China in particular within historical and contemporary
capitalism y (and communism). At the same time, for all the problems and lacunae of Marxist theory, in an age of hyper capitalism and global
structural adjustment it remains an indispensable resource, and its value theoretic and the critique of socially objective forms of thought

But the force of general equivalence or sameness

within Sinological-orientalism is not only a capital-logic or economic
phenomenon. It is indeed one, but it also partakes of other histories, just as
Sinology itself has its own history.3 Thus this orientalism must be understood
(including orientalism) know a new lease on life.

as apart of historical colonialism as such, including its so-called civilizing

mission. As much critical theory has instructed, from Lenin to Fanon and beyond, this evolutionary, teleological discourse of sameness,
of bringing History and civilization to 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission. the colonized, both rationalized colonial rule and literally re-shaped colonial societies. Moreover, the important work of James
Hevia has accomplished nothing less than the reinsertion of (Qing and Republican) China back in to the history of Nineteenth Century
colonialism, a history that had been denied not just by the British colonizers but by postwar Area Studies.4 As with the case of colonial India,
the production of an imperial archive (of texts, translations and knowledge about China) was a concomitant part of this colonial project

And chief within this history are the activities of missionaries

before and after the Boxer Movement and of a larger missionary discourse
that lives on even today in the pious moral tone of American foreign policy
toward China (Leaving a Brand 325). For all its frequently, explicitly racist beliefs
about the Chinese, and their threat, missionary discourse also pre-supposed
the belief that they were equal or the same, and they could and indeed
must be saved (or made equal). This discourse is no less orientalist for such a
logic, but it - and perhaps missionary projects in general - do point to a gap in
Saids analysis: that in some cases and contexts of orientalism and
colonialism it is not simply allowed but mandated that the Other become the
Same. (Developmental economics - since the 1970s at any rate - would perhaps be another case in point.) In sum, this project should
be seen as a complement to Hevias work. Sinological-orientalism represents, in part, a
continuation and transformation of missionary and civilizing discourse,
including its logic of sameness and equivalence. So, too, the Area Studies, literary and other texts
(Archive State 236).

examined in the following chapters should be seen as part of an imperial - or neo-colonial - archive that underpins this orientalism.

link china rise

Chinas not aggressive, proven by integration into
international institutions --- disregard empirical analyses
of power shifts because of the ever-shifting nature of
globalization
Pan, 14 Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of
Humanities and Social Sciences Deakin University (Chengxin, Rethinking
Chinese Power: A Conceptual Corrective to the Power Shift Narrative,
September 2014,
Jhttps://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/downloads/do
cuments/colloquium/Rethinking-Chinese-Power-Chengxin-Pan.pdf, //11)
Chinese Power as Social Constructs

If China finds it difficult to claim economic capabilities as Chinese power, it

is highly doubtful that it could convert wealth or capital into virtually all
types of power and influence (Knorr 1973, 75). For instance, despite Chinas
promise to buy Eurozone debt, its attempts to get southern Eurozone
members to press Brussels to grant it Market Economy status have not
succeeded. More often than not, as the Chinese have found out, it is easier to
use money to achieve prudential returns than to gain strategic geopolitical
advantage (de Jonquires 2012). Even in the case of business dealings with
supposedly much weaker states in Africa, Chinese power has met with
spirited resistance. Ricardo Soares de Oliveira at Oxford University was
quoted in the New York Times as saying that the prototypical weak state in
Africa can have serious leverage, and that African-Chinese relations are not
as unbalanced as is sometimes argued (Nossiter 2013).
Thus, instead of reflecting some material resource-based balance of power,
power relations are ultimately socially constructed by all actors involved . This
is because Chinese live in a world not just of their making (Agnew 2010,
575), and Chinas rise does not take place in a normative vacuum. Whatever
power it may have accumulated must be subject to evolving normative
constructions and constraints. Contemporary China has been growing up
within a regime-intensive international system, with its behavior and use of
power subject to a variety of international norms that did not exist when
Europe and the United States developed (Lanteigne 2005, 32; Lampton
2008, 209). When it comes to US-China relations, in many ways the US has
created a world after its own image, and this is the world in which China now
finds itself (Panitch and Gindin 2012). This US-led world order, in the words of
Ikenberry (2008, 28), is hard to overturn and easy to join. Indeed, some
scholars go so far as to suggest that we are not moving into a Sino-centred
age, but into an age of China integrated into American Empire (Parisot 2013,
1162) and that China is now playing our game (Steinfeld 2010).

Playing our game or not, it is important to note that the Chinese state itself
has undergone transformation in the evolving international society. Jim
Glassman reminds us that states can be seen not as existing external to
markets or production networks but rather as being produced and reproduced
in the same processes that produce markets and production networks (2011,
157). This is indeed how the Chinese state is being (re)produced. As Beijing
finds itself increasingly enmeshed into the globalized economy, it also
realizes that its legitimacy and power depend on the stability and wellbeing
of the global system . The state has thus acquired dual responsibility to both
national economies and the world economy (Cox 1987). In this context, we
may argue that the Chinese state itself is no longer what it used to be (Pan
2009b). While its role continues to be central to Chinas economic activities,
its function has been transformed in the process of Chinas global economic
integration, a process which the state has helped instigate. This of course
does not mean an eventual convergence of China with the West or the end of
global competition. What it does mean is that the nature of that competition
has become more complex than what the power shifts of the past would
entail.
Putting the Notion of a US-China Power Shift in Perspective
As noted above, a national economy approach to power as implied in the
powershift narrative often misses the relational, contextual, structural, and
social nature of Chinese economic power, which has become increasingly
de-territorialized and denationalized as a result of the new transnational
accumulation dynamics (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2006, 4). It therefore
no longer makes as much sense as in the past to talk about Chinese
economic power. This argument goes beyond the power and
interdependence thesis that Chinese and foreign economic powers are
mutually dependent as otherwise discrete power entities (Keohane and Nye
2001). That is, the very national category of economic power is increasingly
elusive in the dynamic global production networks, which are what
differentiate economic globalization today from the interdependent world
economy of the past (Steinfeld 2010). In such networks, power takes on a
form of networked power, defined by Anne-Marie Slaughter (2009, 100) as
the ability to make the maximum number of valuable connections.
Speaking of networked power, Slaughter further argues that the United
States still has a clear and sustainable edge (Slaughter 2009, 95). This may
well be so, but to see networked power this way (as yet again a kind of
quantifiable resource possessed by a state ) is to misunderstand the
fundamentally different nature of networked power which, by definition,
cannot be divided easily along national boundaries. To have networked power
in the world means that, to use Thomas Friedmans words, Were nothing
without the rest of the world (2000, 372). Thus, even as China has gained
tremendous networked power, especially on the economic front, such power

is necessarily highly contingent on its relationship to the outside world . And

that relationship, by definition, cannot be dictated by China alone ; it must be
negotiated and mutually constituted in bilateral and multilateral contexts.
Consequently, Chinese networked economic power cannot be sustained at
the expense of other economies. As Nathan and Scobell (2012, 276) note,
China will not prosper like nineteenth-century colonial powers by exploiting
and impoverishing other societies. . . . Unlike Spain competing with Portugal
in the sixteenth century, Holland competing with Spain the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, or Britain competing with France in the nineteenth
century, China will not get ahead if its rivals do not. Their economic decline or
destruction will not help China.
Despite frequent talks of rivalry, US-China relations have begun to be
characterized by such a new type of power relations , rendering the notion of
an economic power shift from the United States to China less meaningful.
This is not to say that the relative strengths of the United States and China
have not changed at all, or that these countries have arrived at the point of
superfusion or the dual country of Chimerica some have proclaimed
(Karabell 2009; Ferguson 2009). Rather, the point is that their close links are
here to stay and that, because of such links, the power of both countries may
be enhanced and constrained at the same time. As Karabell (2009, 221) puts
it, the fusion of China and America would decrease the power of the U.S.
government. It would, in fact, decrease the power of all central governments,
including Beijing. Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put a
Washington power dilemma this way: we could tell the Chinese SWF
[sovereign wealth fund] not to 15 invest in the US, but it is not in our interest
to do so because it would mean higher prices for our consumers and higher
interest rates for our economy (Xu 2009, 18).
By the same token, even if China did have the so-called financial nuclear
option to dump its massive holdings of US treasury bonds, it could ill-afford
to entertain that option (Navarro 2008). To sell off its US-dollar-denominated
assets would not only drive down the value of its dollar stake, but also
damage the US economy and hinder the exports of Chinese products to the
US market (Xu 2009; Nye 2010; Nathan and Scobell 2012). Some have
described this situation as the financial equivalent of mutual assured
destruction. Susan Strange (1996, 8) argues that during the Cold War
[m]utual assured destruction was a powerful reason for having nuclear
weaponsbut equally it was a good reason for not using them. Therefore as
with nuclear weapons, Beijings alleged financial nuclear power over
Washington lies paradoxically in its non-use . As the largest creditor to the
United States, China has no easy escape from the classic problem faced by
the bank: when a bank lends you a million dollars, its your problem, but
when it loans you a hundred million dollars, its their problem (Karabell
2009, 279). This irony illustrates the liability and vulnerability of the financial

power of the Chinese banker afforded by its structural linkage to the new
global political economy.

Rejecting realist fears of Chinas rise is crucial to

crafting adequate responses to Chinas emergence on the
world stage --- the aff results in a self-fulfilling prophecy
that risks spiraling escalation and conflict
Pan, 14 Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of
Humanities and Social Sciences Deakin University (Chengxin, Rethinking
Chinese Power: A Conceptual Corrective to the Power Shift Narrative,
September 2014,
Jhttps://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/downloads/do
cuments/colloquium/Rethinking-Chinese-Power-Chengxin-Pan.pdf, //11)
Conclusion
China may be the most complex and paradoxical rising power in modern
international history, as reflected in various paradigms and lenses employed
to try to make sense of it (Pan 2012). The power-shift narrative is one such
lens: It provides a seemingly convincing identity statement about a China
that, while still lacking in superpower status, no longer quite fits into the
category of developing countries. This narrative also allows us to reduce the
many complex transnational issues and challenges that do not have a single
national origin to the familiar problems associated with inter-national power
transition. Overall it reflects a particular spatial mindset and geopolitical
imagination that keeps recycling the age-old meta-narrative of a realist
world where power struggle is a constant reality and where the rise and fall
of great powers not only unsettles the balance of power but more often than
not results in the tragedy of great power politics (Mearsheimer 2001).
In doing so, the power-shift narrative betrays the lack of serious
reconceptualization of power. Given the inherently social and relational
nature of power itself as well as the changing global political, economic, and
normative structures, it is imperative that we understand the alleged power
shift from the United States to China through a more complex and nuanced
perspective of power . By assuming that power continues to be attached to
the state as measurable capabilities, and that todays power shift necessarily
resembles shifts of the past, we risk employing old tools to tackle new
problems .
Here it is appropriate to invoke Chinese history and recent US foreign policy
to illustrate how a failure to reconceptualize power can lead to grave
strategic calamities . For more than a millennium, Chinese rulers closely
watched their interior continental frontiers for signs of a challenge to their
power. The fact that such a challenge could come from a new direction (the

coast) and in a different form (naval power) never occurred to them. Yet,
when that new form of power arrived on its shores, the Qing dynasty found
itself vastly illequipped to cope with it. The rest is history. The recent example
is the false unipolar moment assessment of US power and its attendant
neoconservative policy during the George W. Bush period (Reus-Smit 2004). If
the neoconservative faith in the unipolar moment of US power is
misguided, the US decline and power shift discourses may be equally
mistaken.
Yet, to the extent that power is socially constructed, the powerful
conventional discourse of a classic power transition from the United State to
China could have profound practical implications for this important
relationship. As Breslin (2009, 818) notes, a key source of Chinese power is
the assumption by others that it either has it . . . or, maybe more correctly,
that it will have this power and influence some time soon . Whether this
discursively constructed Chinese power matches reality is beside the point,
for both China and other powers may act on the basis of such a projected
power shift (Hagstrm 2012). In China, it might well play into popular
nationalism or encourage arrogance and assertiveness in its foreign policy, or
both. In the West, it would justify a policy of hedging against an ostensibly
rising Chinese power, a policy that in turn could harden Chinas resolve to
further amass power . In this sense, the conventional construction of Chinese
power could well create a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy .

link china threat

The affirmative is part of a larger incomplete analysis of
China -portrayal of China as a rising threat is
constituted in a deep and flawed understanding of its
intentions and IR methodology their discourse causes a
self-fulfilling prophecy
Hagstrm and Jerdn 14 [Linus Hagstrm is associate professor of political
science and senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International
Affairs. He is also a research fellow at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters,
History, and Antiquities. Bjrn Jerdn is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Political Science, Stockholm University, and research associate at the Swedish
Institute of International Affairs. East Asia's power shift: The flaws and
hazards of the debate and how to avoid them, Asian Perspective] bjs
discourse that is arguably central to how China ,
Japan , and the U nited S tates are currently constituted is the power-shift
discourse itself . The entrenchment of this discourse in and beyond academia is
tightly entwined with power relations in East Asia. The notion that power and
knowledge are intrinsically linked, or co-constituted, is the gist of Foucaults
concept of power. To Lukes, knowledge of their real interests can emancipate the victims of power, but to
The Power of the Power-Shift Discourse One

Foucault there is no knowledge beyond power relations, just as there is no power relation without a field of knowledge

Scholars have drawn on this idea to remind each other that the
pursuit and production of knowledge itself creates norms and Linus Hagstrm and Bjrn
Jerdn 351 standards of behavior (Digeser 1992, 991). Hence, knowledge production , including
scholarship, plays an important role in promoting collective understandings in which
certain ideas are seen as legitimate and others as outlandish . Knowledge
production thus becomes deeply entangled in power relations . In IR, constructivists
(Digeser 1992, 986).

and poststructuralists have consequently attacked realist discourse, particularly neorealism, as a power practice
(Guzzini 1993, 465). Since the power-shift discourse rests on a particularly realistand, according to L. H. M. Ling (2013),

Once we acknowledge that

academic concepts and analyses can have constitutive effects, we need to analyze
their performative role. This means addressing the double hermeneutic the
way findings of the social sciences very often enter constitutively into the
world they describe (Giddens 1987, 20)and reflecting on what our interpretations
might do (Guzzini 2007, 23). It is not necessary to accept social constructivism to recognize that the practice of
Westphalianconcept of power, this criticism is clearly of relevance here.

social science is interlinked with power relations outside of academia. Far from scholarly navel-gazing, a reflexive attitude
is arguably a necessary ingredient of any rigorous social science practice (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Hence,

since

the power-shift discourse is not simply a descriptive account of an independent reality

but is destined to be constitutive of that reality, it is essential to explore its
power. Thomas Diez (2005) makes a similar investigation into the power of the concept of normative power Europe
(NPE). He finds that NPE constructs a benevolent and peaceful identity for Europe, but also that its alleged peacefulness is
contrasted with and therefore dependent on an idea of what Europe is notan outside consisting of challenging threats
(2005, 636). The double hermeneutic twist is that the coining of the originally academic NPE concept has become an
important instance of Europes normative power. Diez (2013), however, seems to take for granted the distinction
between post-Westphalian normative powers, which engage in a struggle over the definition of normality in world
politics, and Westphalian great powers, which engage in war, empire building, and physical conquest. Great

powers, however, are

352 East Asias Power Shift also

the products of normative, discursive

pressures, and they reproduce ideas of what is normal great-power

behavior. Much of the power-shift discourse reproduces the same familiar self/ other dichotomy as the NPE literature.
Here, the other is a rising and potentially threatening China, while the self is
a weak but inherently righteous United States /West/Japan. Pan argues that the China
threat discourse is always intrinsically linked to how US
policymakers/mainstream China specialists see themselves (as representatives of the indispensable,
security-conscious nation, for example) (2004, 306). Hagstrm demonstrates how the discourse on Japans
abnormality and weakness reproduces a standard of normality in world politics that is centered on the ability
to go to war. Postwar Japan is socially constructed as deviant from this norm and thus
as a threat to itself. This discourse, which emerges in both Japanese and Western academia and in Japanese
political debate, legitimizes a road map for a more realistic, active, responsible, and normal Japan (Hagstrm

The power of the power-shift discourse does not stop at the production of
identities and standards. The point is that identities and standards produce
effects. Pan illustrates this by showing how the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 19951996 was often
understood as further objective proof of the long-suspected China threat, but few
acknowledged that the China threat discourse itself had played a
constitutive role in the lead-up to that crisis (2004, 323, 320). Moreover, standards in Japans
2014).

normalization discourse have enabled Realpolitik changes in its foreign security policy. Chinese vigilance vis--vis Japan
and the United States might also be interpreted as discursive phenomenathe theme of national reinvigoration is a
product of the lingering notion that China has been continually humiliated and victimized by the great powers since the

the ultimate power of discourse is the

production of self-fulfilling prophecies . When self-fulfilling prophecies occur on
both sides of a dyad, we might end up with a socially generated security dilemma
nineteenth century. As these examples illustrate,

(Johnston 2004). Much research has warned of self-fulfilling prophecies in the East Asian context. Some observers suggest

US or Japanese Linus Hagstrm and Bjrn Jerdn 353 discourses about China might produce
policies of containment , Japanese normalization and remilitarization, and US
rebalancing toward East Asia (Pan 2004; 2012; Hagstrm 2012; Turner 2014a; 2014b). Nonetheless,
that

Japan and the United States have not yet embarked on containing China. Instead, both countries have on the whole

perceived
increases in bellicose or nationalistic representations in Chinese discourses led some
observers to jump to the mistaken conclusion that this had already resulted in
a more assertive Chinese foreign policy (Jerdn 2014). As important as it is to remain vigilant against
accommodated Chinas rise (Christensen 2006; Jerdn and Hagstrm 2012). In a similar manner,

the emergence of socially constructed security dilemmas, we need to bear in mind that there is no deterministic
connection between discourse and policyjust an enabling one. Dominant discourses create propensities for action but do
not make any action inevitable. More empirically informed theorizing is needed to address the questions of how, when,
and why discourses make some actions politically conceivable, easy to communicate, and sometimes even coercive
(Holland 2013). Reflecting on the possible power exercised through the alternative approaches introduced in this special

the ideas of a more

powerful and threatening China, a weak Japan, and a declining United
States. We argue that such representations risk offsetting balancing policies and a security
dilemma in East Asia, in line with the self-fulfilling prophecy logic discussed above. These
issue is also necessary. In this article we raise analytical and normative concerns about

arguments clearly belong to another site of discursive power production. That we have not seen any obvious balancing

our critique of the

power-shift debate might itself be criticized as denying or playing down Chinese
power, which could have two effects: (1) China appears less powerful and thus less threatening, which allows
it to arm itself with impunity and behave aggressively; and (2) the Chinese government can ignore calls to
policies in East Asia thus far might arguably be interpreted as one of its effects. In fact,

take on more international responsibilities with reference to the limited scope of its power. As William Callahan points out,
attempts to counter the China threat theory within China 354 East Asias Power Shift often refute Chinese threats as a
way of facilitating the production of an American threat, a Japan threat, an India threat, and so on (2005, 711).

Adopting a nonintentional power concept allows us to see how even critical

scholars, inside and outside China, who profess no interest in exaggerating threats

against China but rather seek to deconstruct the discourse of threat, might play a role in
accelerating this process (Callahan 2005, 711). In other words, intentional attempts to
prevent the emergence of a self-fulfilling prophecy may actually play an
unintentional part in creating one. Conclusion The power-shift debate is rich and varied,
theoretically and empirically, but the central concept of the discoursepowerremains
severely undertheorized. Most of the literature typically sticks with a property
concept of power, equating it with capabilities . This concept is linked to a
number of well-known measurement and conversion problems . Rather than adopting
alternative understandings of power, such as those discussed in this articlemany of which have a long

scholars and other observers continue to

understand Chinas rise and power shift in terms of capabilities. Widespread
expectations in the 1970s and 1980s that Japan would overtake the U nited S tates
as the predominant actor in the international system were based on the same flawed
concept of power. Why do analysts continue to stick with the property concept? We believe that the
pedigree in the theoretically oriented IR literaturemost

question of the power in the power-shift discourse must enter the analysis at this point. Building on the

reason for the diffusion and entrenchment of

the power-shift discourse is its central role in identity constructions in the
U nited S tates, China, Japan, and elsewhere today as much as in the past. Identity is one
idea of productive power, we argue that one

plausible way to understand the link between productive power and the flawed focus on power as
capability. The aim of this special issue is not to replace the current power-shift debate with a new grand
narrative of what is going on Linus Hagstrm and Bjrn Jerdn 355 in and beyond East Asia, but rather to
challenge and denaturalize it through a series of critiques and analyses of a more limited scope. We do not

the debate is too

certain Chinese capabilities are increasing relative to those of

argue that all observations in the debate are unreasonable. Our objection is that

one-sided . That
the U nited S tates and Japan, or that China exercises more power than before in some issue areas or
contexts, does not sufficiently motivate the stipulation of a power shift, or the
kneejerk interpretation of any regional interaction as having been caused by such a
shift. Having said that, the empirical findings in this special issue provide grounds for
caution regarding the idea that Chinas power is growing across the board , or
that Japan and the United States are becoming increasingly powerless in East Asia. Chan lays bare
the inherent weaknesses in the power calculations on which the idea of
Chinas rise is based . Pan shows that Chinese economic power is much less Chinese than
commonly assumed. Gustafsson suggests that Chinas discursive power of the past has
decreased. OShea and Bukh demonstrate that US power lingers on, over
Japan and in East Asia as a whole.

The China threat is not a political reality but rather a

political myth constructed by the West this securitizing
mindset guarantees violence as we adopt a position of
cultural superiority.
Weiqing Song 15 - associate professor of political science at the University of
Macau, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Siena,
Italy. (Securitization of the China Threat Discourse: A Poststructuralist
Account, Spring 2015, ProjectMuse) hk

In the mode of political myth, the China threat is also represented as affecting
the social sector, where the referent objects under threat are large-scale collective identities.82
These identities may extend beyond the state to nations, religions, cultures, and civilizations. In The

the identity of China is clearly differentiated from that of the

West: it has unfamiliar food, different ways of doing business, human rights
abuses, no respect for local culture, and so on. This is most vividly reflected in the report
Chinese Are Coming,

of a protest made by a number of U.S. citizens outside a Confucius Institute sponsored by the Chinese
government, which teaches Chinese language and culture to the children of U.S. citizens. The narrator
reports that people believe Beijing to be using these classes to smuggle pro-China propaganda into U.S.
classrooms; they are opposed to the Chinese governments trying to brainwash U.S. youth by insidious

the so-called China threat is

represented as a political myth, in whose construction the method of
differentiation plays a dominant role. Securitizers working in the political
myth mode make an effort to stimulate intuitive and psychological responses
from their audience to heighten the latters consciousness of the China threat.
Disseminated as authoritative knowledge of news report s, a comprehensive set of
threats are securitized through the recounting of political myths derived from the notorious
yellow peril narrative in Western history. Power in this mode of
securitization appears in its most intellectual form in the clash of
civilizations thesis, according to which future conflicts in the globalizing world will probably take place
methods of misinformation in U.S. schools. [End Page 163] Here,

along cultural and civilizational lines, as these are constituted by fundamental factors such as history,
language, ethnicity, tradition, and religion. This thesis involves the securitized argument that cultural
identities are central to a world with a shifting balance of civilisations, in which cultural affinities and

If this act of securitization succeeds, a

clash of civilizations will in fact be more likely.
differences shape the alliances and antagonisms.83

Current Anglo-American discourse pointing to a rising China threat are rooted

in a historical xenophobia
Zhang 13 [Yongjin Zhang is Professor of International Politics at the
University of Bristol. China Anxiety: Discourse and Intellectual Challenges,
Development and Change 44(6): 14071425 2013 International Institute of
Social Studies]bjs
A DISCOURSE OF ANXIETIES For many centuries, China has been a fixture in
the Western imagination. In the words of Jonathan Spence (1999: xi): The sharpness of the
feelings aroused by China in the West, the reiterated attempts to describe and analyze the country and its
people, the apparently unending receptivity of Westerners to news from China, all testify to the levels of

Imageries of China as either the Yellow Peril or

the Red Menace have been an integral part of Western obsessions and anxieties
about China (Pan, 2012). The discourse on the rise of China has informed, and
been informed by, these imageries . Few would deny that the AngloAmerican
discourse on the rise of China is a fast-moving one . Claims such as the
coming conflict with America (Bernstein and Munro, 1997) and the coming collapse of
China (Chang, 2001), made only a decade or so ago, now seem light years
removed from the present. Ezra Vogels contemplation of living with China in a nonfascination the country has generated.

confrontational USChina relationship (Vogel, 1997) is a far cry from Bergstens proposed partnership of
equals or a Group of Two (G2) in managing global economic affairs a decade later (Bergsten, 2008).
Gerald Segals (1999) poignant question does China matter? has become no more than rhetorical now.
Yet the

rise of China continues to be a source of anxiety for a variety of reasons. Those

who view the power transition as a zero-sum game are concerned that
Chinas rise is synonymous with American decline . China has built up its soft power,
Joseph Nye (2005) asserts, at the expense of the United States. China is also said to have
mounted a charm offensive worldwide through its diplomatic, trade and
cultural initiatives (Kurlantzick, 2007). In an endorsement of Kurlantzicks book, Orville Schell
claimed that Chinese soft power has begun to transform the world balance of power in a way that makes it
essential for Americans to recalibrate their presumption of US pre-eminence.2 While some argue that
China is increasingly becoming a status quo power, others are convinced that China continues to follow
Dengs grand strategy of hiding its capacity and biding its time (Foot, 2006; Friedberg, 2011; Johnston,
2003, 2007; Taylor, 2007). For Brzezinski (2009: 56), China remains a fundamentally cautious and a
patiently revisionist power, and for Barry Buzan (2010: 18), China is no more than a reformist revisionist.
Aaron Friedberg (2011) goes much further and claims that China has engaged in a contest for supremacy
with the United States in the struggle for mastery of Asia, whereas Peter Navarro (2008) predicts the
coming China wars not because China possesses weapons of mass destruction, but because of its
invention of the weapons of mass production. At the same time, Robert Zoellick (2005) argues that the
China of today is simply not the Soviet Union of the late 1940s and that China does not believe that its
future depends on overturning the fundamental order of the international system. This is at odds with the
conviction of offensive realists such as John Mearsheimer and StephenWalt that China, the rising power,

A rising China will

inevitably challenge the hegemonic United States; the question is thus not
whether, but when this will happen (Mearsheimer, 2001, 2006; Walt, 2010). Offensive realists
and the United States, the hegemonic power, are preordained to clash violently.

may indeed support their proposition by pointing out that China has increased its military spending at a
doubledigit rate annually in the last two decades and has a military budget second only to that of the
United States. Chinas successful attempts at testing its anti-satellite and anti-ballistic missiles technology
in 2007 and 2009 can be cited as clear evidence of Chinas strategic and purposeful challenge to American
dominance in space (Lampton, 2010). China is also said to have developed offensive capability in cyber
warfare and has launched the most egregious cyber-attacks on US commercial and government networks
(Lampton, 2010; The Wall Street Journal, 2013). Stephen Walt counsels at the same time that there is no
need for panic about Chinas phenomenal rise since China has a long way to go before it becomes a true

The cauldron of anxiety in the United

States, to borrow the phrase of Zoellick (2005), is not just about China as a rising power
but about the uncertain strategic intentions of China. In the words of Jeffrey Legro
(2007: 515), the rising China problem is not just about power, but purpose.
peer competitor of the United States (Walt, 2010).

According to Legro (ibid.: 516), neither realists nor liberals have suitable policy responses to Chinas rise,
because Chinas diplomatic future . . . is likely to be more contingent than either the power or
interdependence positions allow. Legro argues that the key is to understand and to seek to shape, if
possible, core ideas held by the Chinese leadership and the way they inform Chinas strategic foreign

For democratic peace theorists, such a proposition is obviously problematic. If

China remains authoritarian and its policy-making processes continue to be opaque, its
strategic intentions are likely to be shrouded in secrecy . For them, nothing short of
policy goals.

fundamental democratic change in China would solve the problem, simply because a democratic China is
much less likely to find itself in a con- flict with the United States, partly because Americans will be more

Others
are even more concerned about the implications of a risi ng China Anxiety: Discourse
and Intellectual Challenges 1411 authoritarian power for the future of the liberal global
order championed by the United States. The question is not whether China is likely to
tolerant of a rising great power democracy than a rising power autocracy (Kagan, 2007: 99).

challenge the hegemonic power or seek to change the rules of the game, nor whether China and the
United States are destined to come into conflict. Rather th e

big question is simply, and more

the liberal system survive [the rise of China]? (Ikenberry, 2008). In this
scenario, another question has been asked: will Chinas dream turn into Americas
nightmare? (Saunders, 2010). Beyond the pure power paradigm, the rise of China
has instigated no less intensive anxiety. The source is Chinas growing prosperity. China
is to blame for the slow global economic recovery from the financial crisis .
poignantly, can

According to Paul Krugman (2010): Most of the worlds large economies are stuck in a liquidity trap
deeply depressed, but unable to generate a recovery by cutting interest rates because the relevant rates

are already near zero. China, by engineering an unwarranted trade surplus, is in effect imposing an antistimulus on these economies, which they cannot offset. Krugman proposes what he calls a turn to
hardball policy towards China (ibid.). Even an increase or decrease in Chinas purchase of US Treasury
bonds causes serious concerns. In July 2010, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) in
Beijing had to go out of its way to publicly rule out the so-called nuclear option of dumping its vast

There are also acute

concerns about the dark side of Chinas relentless pursuit of high-speed
economic growth, from environmental degradation to climate change. Even
holdings of US Treasury bonds for political purposes (China Daily, 2010).

before it overtook the US as the largest emitter of CO2 in 2007, China was regarded as the worst polluter.
China was accused of having either wrecked or hijacked the Copenhagen climate deal (Lynas, 2009;
Vidal, 2009). Together with India, China is said to have sabotaged the UN climate summit at Copenhagen

Chinas forays into Africa raise serious concerns

about its global ambition beyond securing sufficient energy and resources for rapid economic
development. Its presence in Africa is seen as having significant impact on the
development path of the continent and policy decisions of other powers involved (Alden and
(Rapp et al., 2010). Furthermore,

Hughes, 2009; Taylor, 2007). As erstwhile pariah state, China is now said to be in pursuit of the pariah
through its energy security strategy, which shapes its relationship with Iran, Myanmar and Sudan (Canning,
2007). Last but certainly not least, there are anxieties about continued human rights abuses, political
repression, ethnic conflicts and rampant corruption in China, and about the Chinese Communist Partys

There is nevertheless a real shift to be discerned in

the dominant AngloAmerican discourse on the rise of China compared to that of a
decade ago. The difference is that there is now an underlying consensus that
this time the rise of China is for real and it is highly likely to continue, which urgently
requires an effective and rigorous response , particularly by the United States . Yet,
stubborn resistance to democratization.

Will Hutton (2007) contends, the US simply will not make up its mind whether to contain or engage China,
even though the writing is on the wall and the challenges posed by Chinas rise are palpable. In other

the US remains unsure about how to manage China as a rising power.

Its policies seem to have vacillated between constraining, containing,
engaging, enmeshing and hedging against Chinas rise, as the moment of
great strategic uncertainty lingers on . James Steinbergs (2009) call that China must

words,

reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of
security and well-being of others, reflects not only the deep-seated mutual strategic mistrust between
China and the US, but it is also indicative of the ongoing frustration on the part of the US in trying to read

Looming
large on the horizon is a profound unease about China as a rising power. The
China anxiety noted above has morphed into such questions as does the
future belong to China? (Zakaria, 2005); what does China think? (Leonard, 2008);
what will China want? (Legro, 2007); what China wants: bargaining with Beijing (Nathan, 2011);
will Chinas rise lead to war? (Glaser, 2011); and will Chinas rise lead to a new normative
order? (Kinzelbach, 2012). SURPRISES, PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS That these questions
are being asked and debated both in academia and foreign policy circles is
revealing. They testify to deeper anxieties which are discernible but rarely
talked about explicitly and which ultimately concern Chinas pathways to power. That is, given the
Chinas real strategic intentions (Foot, 2009; Lampton, 2010; Lieberthal and Wang, 2012).

apparent contradictions in the Chinese political economy, how has China managed to rise so rapidly? How

These questions take us beyond

concerns expressed about an indeterminate transition of power, strategic
uncertainties and the impact of the rise of China on the future world order . It suggests that prior
to being a problem, the rise of China is first and foremost a puzzle . If we adopt a
could we have got China so wrong in the recent past?

twenty-year perspective, it is humbling to observe how seriously we have misjudged China. Put differently,
Chinas political change, economic transformation and strategic policies since 1990 seem to have defied
most anticipations, projections and predictions by economists, political scientists and international

relations specialists, whether from the political right or the political left, be they realist, liberal or
constructivist.

China, in other words, keeps surprising us all.

Constant debate about the survival of the liberal world order is the link it
assumes it is a universal model which causes threat inflation and escalating
militarism
Zhang 13 [Yongjin Zhang is Professor of International Politics at the
University of Bristol. China Anxiety: Discourse and Intellectual Challenges,
Development and Change 44(6): 14071425 2013 International Institute of
Social Studies]bjs
INTELLECTUAL AGONIES: TWO PROPOSITIONS AND DEBATES Some of the assessments and claims above
are necessarily contentious and subject to dispute. The general argument I seek to make is that China

anxiety runs much deeper than concerns about the possible tragedy of great
power politics (Mearsheimer, 2001) and a global power shift. As Zakaria (2008a) observed,
American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large
and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. The rise of China and
the transformations associated with it in the past twenty-odd years are surely
considered a manifestation of such large and disruptive forces . In the discussion
below, I argue that Chinas pathway to power has served to challenge some dearly held
philosophical assumptions and political convictions in the West . In so doing, it has
raised a set of deeply reflective and, for some, profoundly disturbing,
questions. Are we witnessing an autocratic revival and the return of great
power rivalries and the great game (Gat, 2007; Kagan, 2007)? Or are we moving forward
towards the Post-American world, an unsettling end to Pax Americana (Zakaria, 2008b)?
Can the liberal global order survive (Ikenberry, 2008)? In which direction is history marching
(Gat et al., 2009)? Just a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that such soul-searching
questions would be debated in both academia and government. A brief examination China Anxiety:
Discourse and Intellectual Challenges 1417 of these discussions reveals clear evidence of the intellectual

Gat (2007: 5960) makes the

bold claim that the return of authoritaria n great powers poses a greater
challenge than militant Islam does to the liberal global order the United States has
agony that the rise of China has elicited. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Azar

championed since 1945. According to Gat, authoritarian great powers are poised for a comeback after a
long absence. In his view, such authoritarian capitalist regimes, as exemplified by China and Russia, may
represent a viable alternative path to modernity (ibid.). This return, he further claims, spells the end of
the end of history (ibid.: 59). This implies not only that the near-total dominance of liberal democracy
since the collapse of the Soviet Union will be short-lived (ibid.: 67), but also suggests that there is nothing
inevitable about liberal democracys ultimate victory or future dominance (ibid.: 60). This finds strong
resonance in the claim of Robert Kagan (2007: 4) that the dreams of the post-Cold War era are dissolving
and that the old competition between liberalism and autocracies has also re-emerged, with the worlds

claims about the

autocratic revival and its implications sparked a series of heated debates . Also
writing in Foreign Affairs, Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry (2009) sought to refute Gats claims by
great powers increasingly lining up according the nature of their regimes. These

classifying the autocratic revival as myth. In their view, the proposition of the autocratic revivalists that
autocracies have achieved a new lease on life and are emerging today as a viable alternative within the
global capitalist system (ibid.: 801), is simply wrong. The success of regimes such as those in China and
Russia, they argue, is not a refutation of the liberal vision; the recent success of autocratic states has
depended on their access to the international liberal order, and they remain dependent on its success
(ibid.). Furthermore, even if autocracies today are more competent and more adept at accommodating
capitalism than their predecessors were, they are nonetheless fundamentally constrained by deep-seated
incapacities that promise to limit their viability over the long run. Ultimately, autocracies will move toward
liberalism (ibid.: 7980).

In other words, liberal democracy will prevail in the long

run. Andrew Nathans earlier research on authoritarian resilience in China offers a different perspective.
Not only does he argue that Chinas particular authoritarian system has proven surprisingly resilient, but
he also seeks to explain its endurance. At the risk of over-simplifying Nathans sophisticated arguments,
suffice it to say here that authoritarian resilience in China can be attributed mainly to four undertakings
towards the institutionalization of the CCP regime. According to Nathan (2003: 67), these are: 1) the
increasingly norm-bound nature of its succession politics; 2) the increase in meritocratic as opposed to
factional considerations in the promotion of political elites; 3) the differentiation and functional
specialization of institutions within the regime, and 4) the establishment of institutions for political
participation and appeal that strengthen the CCPs legitimacy among the public at large. 1418 Yongjin
Zhang He nevertheless concludes with the sobering observation that the regime is not supine, weak, or

Debates about an autocratic revival are ongoing. Is

the victory of liberal democracy preordained ? Which way is history marching and
bereft of policy options (ibid.: 15).

unfolding? Is liberal democracy the destiny of all states? Will the triumph of the liberal vision of the

What is perhaps the most salient indication of intellectual

agony in the dominant Anglo-American discourse is Ikenberrys (2008) questions, can
the liberal system survive? and what does the rise of China bode for the
future of the west?. These questions convey an explicit, and somewhat anguished,
acknowledgement of the unstoppable rise of China to a global power. For
international order endure?

Ikenberry, the United States unipolar moment will inevitably end with the rise of China (ibid.: 25).
However, it is not inevitable that an increasingly powerful China and a declining US would be locked in an
epic battle over the rules and leadership of the international system, as some realists would like us to
believe. Chinas increasingly powerful position, Ikenberry argues, would not necessarily lead China to
fundamentally challenge the existing liberal institutions already embedded in the US-led global order. After
all, China has benefited greatly from its increasing engagement with these institutions, mitigating the
likelihood of conflict with the US. China has become powerful, not by challenging these institutions, but by
selectively endorsing and embracing some elements thereof; and indeed because these institutions have
embraced, and not rejected, China. In his words, Chinese economic interests are quite congruent with the
current global economic system a system that is open and loosely institutionalized and that China has
enthusiastically embraced and thrived in (ibid.: 32). China, he further asserts, is increasingly working
within the Western order, because China understands that the road to global power, in effect, runs
through the Western order and its multilateral institutions (ibid.).

Descriptions of Chinas rise by IR scholars play a

fundamental role in determining both the Wests and
Chinas identity that dichotomy destroys any meaningful
U.S.-China relations and causes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Sun 15 [ J. Sun - China Foreign Affairs University , Beijing , China. The
Construction of Uncertainty and Threat: Theoretical Debates on Chinas Rise,
Responding to Chinas Rise: US and EU Strategies, The Political Economy of
the Asia Pacific 15] bjs
The question of uncertainty varies among the schools
of thought in international relations. Rathbun argues that realists define uncertainty as
fear induced by anarchy and the possibility of predation. For rationalists, uncertainty is
ignorance endemic to bargaining games of incomplete information and
enforcement, while for constructivists, it is the indeterminacy of a largely
socially constructed world that lacks meaning, norms and identities . 48 US
scholars have assessed China from these multiple perspectives, which have
thus contributed to its obscure character . In US discourse, the Chinese government itself is often
The Representation of Uncertainty

described as uncertain about what it exactly wants. Terrill notes that it is rather unclear whether China seeks to return to
a past imperial primacy in Asia, the Middle Kingdom or to join what people other than the Chinese style the international
community. 49 This makes it tough to know what the Chinese people want, still less about the direction of the future of
the Chinese civilization. 50 Yet the answer to these questions appears in the dominant discourse in China. Meanwhile,

China is described as an authoritarian regime of dubious legitimacy with an uncertain grip on power. 51 Moreover, the
ideology and forms of government are different between China and the US, which could stimulate a vicious cycle of
mutually reinforcing suspicions and fears. 52 As Friedberg argues, changes in Chinas political institutions may increase
the likelihood that China will collide with the US. 53 Such negative sense is very obvious in describing the government.

Many also remain skeptical of the rhetoric espoused by Chinese leadership . John
Mearsheimer bluntly states that intentions are in the minds of decision-makers and
they are especially difficult to discern . Talk is cheap and leaders have been known to lie to foreign
audiences. Thus, it is hard to know then intentions of Chinas present leaders. 54 Furthermore, even if todays leadership

If we accept
Mearsheimers cynicism as valid, no one can fully be trustednot only the
Chinese leadership but also other actors in other countries. Such reasoning is
obviously not convincing. Even when the Chinese government has repeatedly expressed the motives and
is reliable, it is impossible to correctly infer what their words will mean in the future. 55

goals of Chinas development, it is often accompanied with a sense of deception. According to Glaser, the understanding
and perception of one anothers motives and goals will infl uence the seriousness of the security dilemma. 56 Those who
posit that China has been hiding its real intentions have made it urgent to understand Chinas real intentions for the sake

To the American public, Chinas goals are even less

clear and thus more disconcerting. China is said to be biding its time, concealing plans that for now
of national and international security.

seem too diffi cult to execute. As Terrill describes: China has been keeping its intentions under wraps. If we say Peace and
Development seem to be the goals of the Chinese foreign policy, they are the means rather than ends. To say they are

The
present and future China-US dynamic is also considered extremely precarious .
According to Warren Cohen, the answers to the following two questions are still not clear: Will China once
again become the worlds dominant force , and if its power comes to equal or exceed that of the
US, how will it use that power? 58 Mearsheimer holds that past behavior is usually not a reliable indicator
Chinas goals is like saying Hu Jintaos purpose tomorrow is to put on his trousers and brush his teeth. 57

of future behavior since future leaders may be fundamentally different from todays leaders. 59 How China will behave in
the future therefore cannot adequately be predicted by Chinas recent foreign policy. Moreover, some experts question
whether China is rising or not. For instance, Avery Goldstein warns against accepting the inevitability of Chinas rise:
Given the potential for political turmoil to derail an already diffi - cult and stressful program of economic development, it
is, therefore, prudent to remember that Chinas rise, however plausible, is far from a sure bet. 60 On the other hand, he
highlights the possibility that Chinas rise is and will always be a priority despite evidence to the contrary. He continues:

Chinas rise has just begun; it is a story whose last chapter is not yet written.
It is certainly possible that a current shift to cooperative, multilateral approaches for handling disagreements with its
Southeast Asian neighbors will prove to be a temporary phenomenon, perhaps retrospectively seen as a tactical
adjustment that obscured a larger strategy. 61 The scholars and policymakers Aaron Friedberg describes as liberal
pessimists place more emphasis on the different political systems between China and the US. 62 They suggest that
ideological factors strongly shape the development of ChinaUS relations. If China were a liberal democracy, Americans
might not feel as threatened by Chinas growing infl uence. As Friedberg describes, If the Americans, Chinese or both
become convinced that their counterparts are implacably hostile and that confl ict is therefore inevitable, they will

The
representation of threat is often the primary theme of realism. Realism
suggests that the rise of any power will inevitably generate international conflict
and therefore the current power, the US, should formulate policies to meet this
upcoming challenge. Besides influencing US foreign policymakers, this realist interpretation
heightens Chinese suspicion of the intentions behind Western and US policies
regarding China. Mutual suspicions stem from the persistent structural conflict between China and the US.
undoubtedly act in ways that make confl ict far more likely. 63 4.4.3 The Representation of Threat

Mearsheimer uses Chinas Unpeaceful Rise as the title of one of his papers. 64 He argues that Chinas rise will cause
fierce competition between the two and will very likely lead to waran unavoidable phenomenon between a rising power
and the current power. 65 Since WWII, the US has been trying to maintain world hegemony, and so the US might become
even more determined to prevent Chinas impressive power accession. Chinas neighbors such as India, Japan, Singapore,
and South Korea might indeed join the US in containing China, which would constrain Chinas ability to rise peacefully. As
Glaser puts it, Chinas growing strength, most realists argue, will lead it to pursue its interests more assertively, which
will in turn lead the US and other countries to balance against it. 66 According to this line of realist logic, China is
considered a revisionist state and will sooner or later challenge US hegemony. Like all previous potential hegemons, China
is strongly inclined to become a real hegemon. Although China has repeatedly emphasized its peaceful intentions, realist
qualms are nonetheless widespread in the US. As Peter Gries argues, policy-makers and pundits like Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and IR theorist John Mearsheimer suggest that China is a revisionist power destined to clash with the
US. 67 A.F.K. Organskis power transition theory provides further prediction regarding Chinas rise. 68 Scholars with such
views hold that Chinas rise is dangerous and disruptive. As the current international order is mainly shaped by American
power, China, while gaining more and more power, will try to rearrange the world order. According to the language of
power transition theory, rising powers usually define their interests expansively and seek a great degree of influence over

what is going on around them. They not only secure their frontiers but also reach out beyond them, taking steps to ensure
access to markets, material, and transportation routes. Rising powers often seek to challenge territorial disputes,
international institutional arrangements, and hierarchies of prestige that were put in place when they were relatively
weak. The dominant power may attempt to use force to destroy the rising state before it can achieve its potential. For
more on power transition theories, see Gilpin ( 1983 ) and Mearsheimer ( 2003 ). which can better refl ect the change of
distribution of power and bring more benefi t to China. The probability of confl ict between China and those who will resist
its demands and regional shifts will therefore increase, and the one most likely to resist will be the US. Some realist

pessimists argue that in recent years , Chinas economic power has undergone an unprecedented
expansion; experts have even predicted that by 2015 Chinas economy could surpass that of the
US. 69 The power transition will very likely feature conflict and mistrust ,
destabilizing the international system and pushing China and the US into a security dilemma. 70 Other realists focus on
the regional level since the impetus for a countrys rise is often stronger at the regional than systemic level. According to
realists such as Mearsheimer, the ideal situation for a great power is to become the only great power in the international
system. Additionally, the wider the gap between the hegemon and the other powers, the better it is for the hegemon. 71
Yet because this is virtually impossible, the best outcome for a great power is to be a regional great power. China is said to
be willing to do all it can to become an Asian hegemonthe US counterpart in the Eastern hemisphere. The US, in
response, may be just as willing to contain China in Asia. Another avenue of discourse, however, is that Chinas rapid rise
of power and infl uence in world affairs will push the US out of Asia. 72 According to Terrill, one of Chinas goals
unstated, of courseis to replace the US as the leading power in East Asia. 73 This US perspective diverges quite
significantly from Chinas: Chinese leaders see very little to be gained from an assertive posture and pressure tactics
directed against the US. 74 Such an approach will only add friction and even confl ict to ChinaUS relations. China
maintains that US cooperation in Asia is in its own interest because the future security environment in the Asia-Pacifi c

Chinas rise is often represented as a threat to not

only the US but the whole international order as well. Accompanying the realist discourse of
depends largely on these two countries.

threat is the more common discourse regarding military threat. The latter describes the military threat China imposes on
the US, which has caught the US governments undivided attention. Each year, the US Department of Defense publishes a
comprehensive annual report that provides all the details of Chinese military development. The reports are publicly
available and openly accessed through the Department of Defense website, while no equivalent reports on the military
capabilities of other nation-states are made available. 75 It is evident that the US government has been trying to raise
public awareness of Chinas military development. These reports also share several commonalities, such as the perceived
vulnerability of Taiwan and US suspicion of Chinas military budget. The PLA may enjoy a budget four times that of what is
officially announced. Even in the 2010 US National Security Strategy, where President Obamas tone towards China was
quite friendly and cooperative, he nonetheless firmly and defensively addressed Chinas military threat: We will monitor
Chinas military modernization program and prepare accordingly to ensure that US interests and allies, regionally and
globally, are not negatively affected. 76 Although China claims that its military forces are largely defensive, realists argue
that defensive and offensive military capabilities cannot be so clearly distinguished, nor are they mutually exclusive, for
the former can easily develop into the latter. Particular language can further heighten concern over Chinas military
development. Mearsheimer accentuates Chinas aggression but does not necessarily conclude its certainty: Right now,
we cannot tell much about Chinas future behavior because now China has limited capacity to act aggressively. 77 4.5

The Influence of the Discursive Gap on ChinaUS Relations From the previous two sections, we can see
that China and the US present and interpret Chinas rise differently . The
prevailing discourse in the US provides the public with a threatening and
uncertain identity of China . Identity is not merely a selfdefined image; it is often
understood through others perceptions. The gap between the self-defined
identity and that perceived by others may ultimately reflect divergent views of
one anothers intentions, and so if not managed properly and successfully, this discursive gap
might undermine long-term cooperation by adding more mistrust and
hostility to the relationship . The discursive gap exacerbates the cognitive
dissonance between China and the US . According to language constructivism, language
profoundly impacts cognition, which can vary greatly from one person to the next. With regard to
foreign policymaking, cognitive dissonance is a key factor that influences the
decision-making process. 78 Intersubjective cognitive dissonancethe notion that different actors
may perceive the same object differently is a phenomenon already common to US
China relations because of their contrasting cultures , traditions, and ideologies. At the global
level, this phenomenon plays a large role in the decision-making process and is
clearly revealed through the US and Chinas distinct use of language concerning Chinas military
development. China often describes its military progress as part of its modernization process and its strategy to
safeguard Chinas national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, and to adapt to the worlds military changes, as

well as the constant development of new weapons. 79 With defense spending of only 1.4 or 1.5 % of the countrys GDP in
recent years, China vouches that it will follow the path of peaceful development and will adhere to a defensive (rather
than offensive) policy for national defense. 80 In contrast, the US discusses Chinas military development in terms of a
lack of transparency and a growing threat, underscoring the increase in military spending, naval power, and hi-tech
weaponry. Consequently, China often criticizes the US for exaggerating Chinas military threat, arguing that US defense
spending is in fact more than 4 % of US GDP, which is far larger than Chinas. The Pentagons annual report to Congress
regarding Chinas military and security development always arouses criticism from the Chinese side, especially
considering the use of such language as there remains uncertainty about how China will use its growing capabilities. 81

The discursive gap also influences the divergent perception of intentions and
actions between China and the US . If the same style of language appears in different contexts,
different interpretations and actions will result. During this interpretation process, emotional
factors, traditional beliefs, reference framework, and social environment are
all important factors for the final perception. If particular language appears in a friendly and
cooperative context, the interpretation is likely to be positive, whereas if in the context of threat and hostility, the
interpretation may be negative. For instance, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on July 23, 2010,
outlining the US policy on the South China Sea at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, stating that the US had a national
interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asias maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South
China Sea. 82 She emphasized the need to resolve disputes without the use or threat of force and stated claimants
should pursue their territorial claims and accompanying rights to maritime space in accordance with the UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 83 Americans regarded this speech as a result of growing pressures on the countries of
this region to speak out on the issue. 84 Conversely, China interpreted Clintons words as an obvious attempt by the US to
internationalize the South China Sea territorial disputes and to contain China because the Chinese are very well aware of
American realist discourse and its focus on US containment of Chinas regional and global rise. The Americans then
interpreted Chinas response as a display of assertiveness in the South China Sea, which was even said to be the battlefi
eld of the future. 85 In recent years, many Americans characterize Chinas foreign policy as new assertiveness.
However, according to Alastair Iain Johnstons recent research, Chinas 2010 foreign policy did not change much compared
from the past. 86 A similar instance of cognitive dissonance also occurred between the US and China during the USROK
Naval Exercises in the Yellow Sea in 2010. The US government regarded the exercises as a show of US commitment to the
USROK alliance and of US criticism of North Korea. Despite occurring off the coast of Korea and not China, China
nevertheless felt that the foreign warships and military aircraft carrying out activities in the Yellow Sea and other Chinese
coastal waters negatively affected its security interests. In this regard, the exercises had a dual effect in both deterring
and threatening China. 87 While the US interprets Chinas behavior as increasingly assertive and challenging, China
understands US action and intention to be focused on Chinas containment. This discrepancy in rhetoric and interpretation
will further complicate bilateral relations and may even lead to wrong judgment. The two sides may continue to fi ght

The
concept of Chinas Rise carries both material and discursive significance. It
reflects not only Chinas rapid development over the past three decades but also a multitude of different
discourses and social meanings. In the latter case, Chinas rise ultimately serves to
construct social reality. Joseph Nye has appropriately cautioned that the China
threat theory has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy , and so
the US needs to make sure that it does not exaggerate the risks of Chinas
rise in terms of its increasing power and military strength. 88 According to Nye, based on the crude hypothesis
each other with words, only to exacerbate mutual hostility and dim prospects for future cooperation. 4.6 Conclusion

assumption that there exists a 50 % chance of China becoming aggressive, treating China as an enemy now would

Security is a form of feeling that is constructed through

interaction and quite often it is a subjective matter based on perception of the Self
apart from the Other. If the US holds that Chinas growing military power
threatens US vital interests, it may adopt overly competitive military and
foreign policies, which will in turn threaten China and overall bilateral security .
effectively discount 50 % of the future. 89

China and the US still compete in some areas and often lack mutual trust, and so both would be more willing to maintain
their existing and relatively stable identities.

Frequent contact with others, especially those

who challenge existing identities, can lead to perceptions of threat and
these may cause resistance to transformations of the self and thus to social
change. 90 Constructive engagement is therefore the preferable approach to maintain and develop amicable
ChinaUS relations. Constructive engagement includes not only constructive action but constructive language as well.

link cyber
Representations of a cyber threat from China rely on false
data and ignore crucial distinctions causes a selffulfilling prophecy
Mims 13 (Christopher Mims is the science and technology correspondent for
Quartz. He is a former editor at Seed, Scientific American, Technology Review,
Grist and Smithsonian. Overheated rhetoric over cyberwar with China could
be a self-fulfilling prophecy 3/14/13 http://qz.com/62482/overheatedrhetoric-over-cyberwar-with-china-could-be-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy/)///CW
Graham Webster, who researches US-China relations at Yale Law School, has published a timeline of what

the medias (and US governments) tendency to hype the threat

of cyber-attacks from China. Webster thinks that, by turns, the bureaucrats and the
media have a tendency to run away with the narrative of China waging a
concerted cyber-war on America. Intentionally or not, Webster argues, this is amplifying the
message coming from Washington in ways that could be dangerous. Here, for example, is a
problematic line from a recent New York Times piece on the testimony of James Clapper ,
US Director of National Intelligence (emphasis mine): James R. Clapper Jr., warned Congress that a
he considers to be

major cyberattack on the United States could cripple the countrys infrastructure and economy, and
suggested that such attacks now pose the most dangerous immediate threat to the United States, even
more pressing than an attack by global terrorist networks.

But this is not really what Clapper

said. While he highlighted cyber attacks as an important threat (and they are discussed at length in the
March 12 Worldwide Threat Assessment (pdf) released by his office), both his public comments, as far as
transcripts are available, and the report he referenced says that in the next two years there is a remote
possibility of a cyber attack on the US that would damage infrastructureas the Times story
acknowledges. I called up one of the reporters on the story, Mark Mazzetti, who explained that, when it
comes to reading the tea leaves in Washington, the order in which threats are listed in the Worldwide
Threat Assessment report is significant. This year, for the first time since 2009, Cyber came first in the
report, before terrorism and nuclear proliferation. That certainly suggests that intelligence officials want
Congress to know that cyber attacks are an emerging threat, likely to grow more serious in the near future
while the threats of, say, al-Qaeda bombings or an Iranian nuclear weapon remain more stable. But thats
not the same as saying they are the most dangerous immediate threat, especially not if the chances of a
significant cyber-attack in the next two years are remote. (Even trying to compare such disparate threats
and say which is most dangerous seems a contentious exercise.) Is this just nit-picking? No. It matters
because, as security guru Bruce Schneier told Quartz,

the US is not presently, nor has it ever

been engaged in a cyberwar. As Webster notes, in coverage of hacking emanating from China,
the difference between stealing secrets and threatening military systems or
life-supporting infrastructure is often glossed over , allowing fear of economic espionage
to bleed into fear of military battle. While bringing the issue of cyber attacks into the open could lead to a

Too much alarmism

will color both public perception and politicians actions on the issue, perhaps
dangerously. Webster again: If more people in the US start seeing China as a Cold
War-like enemy, they may find themselves fulfilling their own prophecy, an
outcome far worse than the loss of corporate secrets .
more open dialogue about the problem, the way in which its raised is crucial.

The affs representations of Chinas cyber activities as

cause for concern relies on conflation and exaggeration,
depicting China as a belligerent adversary to be governed
and controlled
Koehler 14. (Clifford, Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University in Political Science.
Identities Among Nations: Power and Politics in U.S.-China Relations, PhD Dissertation. April
2014.
https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/134783/content/Koehler_asu_0010E_13634.pdf)//CB

In their cyber relations, China and the United States engage in

representational practices and adopt narratives that define the identity of
cyber space, of each other, and of themselves. Their relations in cyber
space demonstrate the mixed identity of cyber space and of both actors.
Though often conflated with other cyber threats, cyber espionage presents
the most salient and controversial issue facing the United States and China
with regard to cyber space. In particular, the United States worries about
Chinese technological and business espionage. It is more difficult to ascertain
Chinas specific concerns regarding cyber espionage but as the U.S. holds a
technological and economic advantage, Beijings concerns most likely relate
more to U.S. dominance in cyber space, general intelligence collection and,
not trivially, their international image with respect to accusations of Chinese
hacking. Where these concerns receive most attention is in the media
outlets of both countries, which then increases the need for both sides to
respond to publicized cyber threats or the accusations of the other.
The conflation of concern over cyber espionage with other forms of cyber
threats and the frequent exaggeration of these threats plays into the Cold
War identity of cyber space, despite the high levels of economic
cooperation enjoyed by both Beijing and Washington and other key
differences in their overall relations in both the real and cyber worlds. The
narratives adopted by both sides serve to increasingly depict one another
and U.S.-China relations competitively, though amidst attempts made to
refrain from explicitly doing so.281 Both sides are essentially defining the
identity of cyber space and one another while they engage in these
practices. However, these definitions are anything but definite and
unambiguous. While the U.S. and China are forming an adversarial identity of
cyber space in their relations with one another, the attempts by both sides
to mitigate the contrarian aspects of their relationship in cyber space and
elsewhere show that they are not Cold War adversaries competing in a new
Cold War (cyber) battle space. Instead, despite their adversarial relations in
cyber space, the relationship and identities are ever fluctuating and
somewhat indeterminate, exhibiting somewhat of a dual nature, at least for
the time being.
Many issues and incidents promote the adversarial identity of cyber space in U.S.-China relations. Both
sides increasingly focus on cyber space as it relates to their overall security and their ability to conduct
cyber warfare. In 2009, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) went as far as to establish the
very worlds first cyber command, CYBERCOM, to protect U.S. government and military computer networks
from increasing cyber threats. Overall, however, the U.S. appears to be quietly developing its cyber

warfare capabilities, as they receive little public discussion aside from relatively restrained information on
defensive policies. This especially holds for U.S. development of offensive cyber capabilities. China does
publicly indicate some high level focus and attention on developing and training a preponderant cyber
warfare force, hoping to leapfrog past the United States in terms of military technology instead of
attempting match the United States far superior traditional military capabilities, especially when assessing
cyber espionage undertaken against the United States. As Susan Brenner states, China even has already
articulated plans for cyber warfare that involve using civilians and civilian entities in attacking foreign
corporate and financial institutions.282 While both sides undoubtedly plan and develop offensive cyber
capabilities, the actual activities undertaken by both sides remain primarily defined in terms of cyber
intelligence and espionage. However, focus on cyber warfaredefense and offenseby both sides has a
militarizing effect on the identity of cyber space in international politics.

U.S. Perspective of U.S.-China relations in Cyber Space

U.S. decisions to pay increasing attention to cyber space come largely due to
the many cases of cyber espionage that the government and civil society
have experienced over recent years, often reportedly originating from the
Peoples Republic of China (PRC).283 The U.S. government claims that its
networks are probed thousands of times and scanned millions of times
every day.284 Titan Rain, for instance, offers one example of what the
United States faces: Titan Rain is the informal code name for ongoing acts
of Chinese cyber espionage directed against the U.S. Department of Defense
since 2002. According to Lieutenant General William Lord, the Air Forces
Chief of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, China has
downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet (the DODs NonClassified IP Router Network).285 It is also believed that China was behind
the downloading of information related to the Joint Strike fighter, that China
has targeted members of the defense industry, that China recently targeted
major U.S. newspapers, and that China has even targeted the Internet search
giant Google. In January 2010, Google experienced cyber attacks
apparently originating from within China, aimed, at least in part, at the
Gmail user accounts of Chinese human rights activists.286 During June of
2011 Google again experienced attacks originating from China, with strong
suspicions of links to the Chinese government, Google claiming it had been
the target of a cyberspying campaign.287 China refuted these claims,
though suspicion of the Chinese government is explicitly reflected in a Beijing
embassy cable, classified Secret, from 2010 released by WikiLeaks. The cable
states that the nephew of a Politburo Standing Committee member informed
his contact that the Google attacks were coordinated out of the State Council
information office with oversight by Standing Committee members.288
Recently, the computer security firm Mandiant even released a report
providing strong (but still not entirely conclusive) evidence linking the
Chinese military, specifically Unit 61398 in Shanghai, to hacking aimed at
the United States.289 Mandiant reports that this unit has stolen hundreds of
terabytes of information from at least 141 different organizations throughout
the world. These different cases demonstrate the cyber espionage threat
faced by the United States and reasoning behind increasing concern over
cyber space within Washington.

For U.S.-China relations regarding cyber space, the United States adopts a
narrative asserting its own identity as a victim at the hands of Chinese cyber
attacks and belligerence. The U.S. has also asserted a correlation between
cyber space, deterrence, and the Cold War. As such, the U.S. expresses the
need and has taken action to define the identity of cyber space in terms of
recognized domains of warfare, not only defining the identity of cyber space,
but defining its own role in establishing this identity and the rules (informal as
they may be) governing this domain. Even if arguably inaccurate or
misguided, identifying cyber space as a domain of warfare serves to
strengthen U.S. power and influence with regard to this space. Doing so also
projects onto China the identity of a , to some degree, belligerent adversary
while casting the U.S.- China relationship, at least in cyber space, in light of
Cold War sentiments and views of international politics.

The Affs Characterization of Cyber War only makes it

more likely
Lindsey 15 [Jon R. Lindsey, An assistant research scientist at the University
of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and an assistant
adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego School of
International Relations and Pacific Studies, February 18, 2015, International
Security,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/ISEC_a_00189#.V3VpzjkrLs2
] JMov
Exaggerated fears about the paralysis of digital infrastructure and
the loss of competitive advantage contribute to a spiral of mistrust
in U.S.-China relations. In every category of putative Chinese cyber threat, there are also
considerable Chinese vulnerabilities and Western advantages. China has
inadvertently degraded the economic efficiency of its networks and exposed
them to foreign infiltration by prioritizing political information control over
technical cyber defense. Although China also actively infiltrates foreign targets, its ability to
absorb stolen data is questionable, especially at the most competitive end of the value chain,
where the United States dominates. Similarly, China's military cyber capacity
cannot live up to its aggressive doctrinal aspirations , even as its efforts to guide
national information technology development create vulnerabilities that more experienced U.S. cyber
operators can attack. Outmatched by the West, China is resorting to a strategy of international institutional

A
cyber version of the stability-instability paradox constrains the intensity of
cyber interaction in the U.S.-China relationshipand in international relations
more broadlyeven as lesser irritants continue to proliferate.
reform, but it benefits too much from multistakeholder governance to pose a credible alternative.

Specifically US-China Cyber Link

Lindsey 15 [Jon R. Lindsey, An assistant research scientist at the University
of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and an assistant

adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego School of

International Relations and Pacific Studies, February 18, 2015, International
Security,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/ISEC_a_00189#.V3VpzjkrLs2
] JMov
across political, intelligence, military, and institutional threat narratives
makes cybersecurity a challenging policy problem, which can lead to
theoretical confusion. For each category, I have argued that the threat from China is
exaggerated whereas the threat to China is underappreciated. By prioritizing political
information control over technical cyber defense, China has inadvertently
degraded the economic efficiency of its networks and exposed them to
foreign infiltration. Although China also actively infiltrates Western networks,
its ability to absorb stolen data is questionable, especially at the most
competitive end of the value chain, where the United States dominates.
Similarly, China's military cyber capacity cannot live up to its aggressive
doctrinal aspirations, even as informatization creates vulnerabilities that more experienced
foreign cyber operators can attack. Outmatched by the West, China has resorted to a
strategy of institutional reform, but it benefits too much from
multistakeholder governance to pose a credible alternative. The secrecy of
cyber capabilities and operations on all sides makes it difficult to estimate
with confidence the magnitude of the gap between China and the United
States in the balance of cyber power, but it is potentially growing, not
shrinking. My examination of the case of China provides further support for critics of the cyber
revolution thesis. The social context of exploitation matters tremendously for cyber performance. The
more ambitious the infiltration, the greater the reliance on technical
expertise, reliable intelligence, and organizational capacity to contend with
mounting complexity and risk of compromise. This stands in contrast to the
popular and erroneous belief that hacking is cheap and easy. It is a mistake to infer
Overlap

conclusions about high-impact cyber operations from more prosaic and plentiful cybercrime. Cyberspace
enables numerous variations on familiar themes in political demonstration, crime, propaganda, signals
intelligence, and electronic warfare, and it diffuses these activities widely. But cyber capabilities work as
complements to power, not substitutes for it, and they are certainly not revolutionary game changers. This
finding effectively shrinks two of the four quadrants in my typology, leaving only the evolutionary end of
the technological threat spectrum. The normative politics of internet governance return to the open
internet quadrant (where they have always been), and cyberwarfare collapses largely into contested
cyberspace. Military cyber operations will emphasize exploitation for intelligence over disruption, even as

The main problem of

cybersecurity thus reduces to the evolving pursuit of marginal and deceptive
advantage amid the benefits of open interconnection. Hallmarks of this development
the latter plays an adjunct role in combined arms warfare and covert action.

include continuous and sophisticated intelligence contests, the involvement and targeting of civilian
entities, enduring great power advantage relative to weaker states and nonstate actors, noisy symbolic

On the political dimension,

cybersecurity reflects the thoroughly ambiguous relationship between China
and the United States, distinguished by deep economic interdependence as
well as rivalry and mistrust in the security arena. Harassment in cyberspace,
which relies on cooperative deception, both exploits and amplifies the
ambiguity in the political relationship. Vibrant online exchange invites covert exploitation;
protest, and complicated politics of institutional design.

but to preserve an internet worth exploiting, attackers must avoid crossing lines that might trigger costly
counteraction. Broad agreement persists among major powers on the desirability of interconnection across

borders, and lucrative new opportunities continue to open up with every innovation in computing, from

Indeed,
the main reason actors worry about cybersecurity at all is because the
internet is so useful most of the time. Most competition depends on some
cooperation, and contested cyberspace is likewise predicated on the open
internet. Internet openness enables contestation in cyberspace while competitors calibrate their
virtualized services (the cloud) to mobile and embedded devices (the internet of things).

exploitation to avoid closure. States and firms may throw up barriers to connection to deal with security

thorough
internet fragmentation is unlikely to occur, because the economic benefits of
interconnection are too great and cyber threats are too ambiguous. The
internet has made China and the West richer than they would otherwise be,
and ambiguous friction in cyberspace is just the price of doing business. There
externalities, even adopting national networking protocols with reduced interoperability. 111 Yet

is one remote but serious danger, however. Although limited war between the United States and China is
extremely unlikely given the high costs of naval warfare and the disruption of trade, it is possible to
imagine some paths to war through miscalculation in a crisis involving Japan or Taiwan. Misperceptions
about the coercive potency of cyberwarfare or mistakes in the integration of cyber with other warfighting
domains would inject additional uncertainty into such a crisis and make it more unstable. Chinese ability to
manage the complex intelligence and command integration necessary to create predictable (and thus
usefully weaponized) effects through cyberspace is questionable, even as Chinese doctrine calls for the
early and paralyzing use of cyberattacks. Cyberweapons are highly classified, even as their effectiveness is
poorly understood and often exaggerated. These properties are as likely to confuse friendly commanders
as they are to muddy signals to an adversary, with ambiguous implications for escalation. 112 Importantly,
this particular risk emerges via misperception rather than through the actual potency of an assassin's
mace weapon. Barring gross misperception, however, one can expect the risk of unwanted escalation
from cyber to other military domains to deter both sides from resorting to more destructive forms of
computer network attack in most situations. 113 Yet although nuclear or conventional deterrence might be
able to check catastrophic cyberattack, it cannot credibly discourage minor cyber aggression such as
nationalist hacktivism, industrial espionage, or harassment of dissident expatriates. Indeed, the observable
pattern of Chinese (and American) cyber activity conforms to the logic of the Cold War stability-instability
paradox, but in slightly revised form. In the original formulation of the paradox, mutual vulnerability to
nuclear retaliation inhibits nuclear war but encourages conventional war in peripheral theaters where
nuclear threats are not credible.114 Today, the intensity of cyber aggression is bounded by the risk of any
form of military retaliation as well as the need to preserve interconnection and protect sources and
methods that rely on deception. Cyberattackers intentionally keep the costs they inflict below the assessed
threshold of even limited military retaliation by opponents, occupying a region where military threats of
punishment would be utterly noncredible. The aggressor's freedom of action is further constrained by the
need to maintain stealth and plausible deniability for ongoing operations. Actors that are deterred by
threats of military punishment, on the one hand, and threats of counterintelligence detection or loss of
connection, on the other, are encouraged to find more limited ways to inflict costs. The complexity of
modern computer network infrastructure, in particular, offers many inexpensive ways to inflict minor costs.
One implication is that cyberspace creates more scope for nontraditional security concerns (e.g.,
harassment of human rights organizations and vulnerable user communities) that powerful actors usually

As long as dense
interconnection and economic interdependence remain mutually beneficial
for powers such as the United States and China, they will be able to tolerate
the irritants that they will inevitably inflict on one another. The modern intelligenceignore in their focus on protecting high-value economic and military assets. 115

counterintelligence contest plays out in a complicated sociotechnical space where states take advantage
of economic cooperation and hedge against security competition. If their broader mutual interest frays,
however, then cyberwarfare becomes just one facet of a more serious strategic problem involving more

Exaggeration of the cyber threat feeds spirals of mistrust, which

make this undesirable outcome slightly more likely. The United States and China
dangerous means.

should discuss the interaction of cybersecurity and traditional military force in depth and take steps to limit
misunderstandings about the other's intentions. They might even learn to interpret chronic cyber friction

the
emergence of complex cyber threats may be a positive development in the
tragic history of international politics: the bad news about cybersecurity is
good news for global security.
as a sign that more truly dangerous threats have been constrained. Contrary to conventional wisdom,

link engagement
Engagement in the Asia Pacific is the vehicle to export
American values in the quest for expansionismthis is
done solely out of American interests and nullifies
opposition through its discursive acceptance
Turner 16. (Oliver, Hallsworth Research Fellow of Political Economy @ University of
Manchester. China, India and the US Rebalance to the Asia Pacific: The Geopolitics of Rising
Identities, Geopolitics. June 1, 2016. Accessed via Taylor & Francis Online.)//CB

US engagement in the Asia Pacific, and by extension its international- ism,

also continues to represent less a political choice than a mode of being . In a
majority of statements it is argued that American values and/or principles,
which Clinton asserts are the United States most potent asset in the Asia
Pacific, even above the military,72 should be exported for the greater good.
Such an understanding remains a common sense statement of fact; the
question is never whether the world benefits from universal American
values , only how best they are delivered. For political practice to be
legitimised and for additional narratives to be rendered unthinkable ,
discourses dominate by nullifying opposition .73 Thus when Ash Carter
explains that we must all decide if we are going to... cement our influence
and leadership in the fastest-growing region in the world; or if, instead, were
going to take ourselves out of the game,74 he shuts down debate over
American internationalism by removing all credibility from the only apparent
alternative. Together with representations of the Asia Pacific as an
opportunity for the United States in twelve of the fifteen statements, little
space is left for dissent.
Thus in several respects the rebalance represents modern day proof of
America, by enhancing its presence in a region which has potential and is
maturing (see Table 2) but which requires indispensable US support. Indeed,
with a familiarly unquestioned duty to internationalism persists an enduring
belief in the moral right to American power and hegemony. Three quarters of
statements refer to the beneficial or benevolent role of the US military in the
Asia Pacific. As tellingly, as constitutive of ideas about US power and purpose
Chinas military is envisioned as destabilising in part for being morally
illegitimate. This lack of legitimacy is once again a construct of discursive
design.
For example, Clinton observes that the United States and the interna- tional
community have watched Chinas efforts to modernize and expand its
military, and we have sought clarity as to its intentions.75 In doing so she
undermines Chinas already uncertain relationship with the international
community, but with no defined borders, membership, or qualifications for
entry, that community is an imaginative geography par excellence. The
American frontier once represented the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization.76 Now the talk is rarely about

civilization versus barbarism or savagery, but that global binary of

inside/outside is embodied in such fantasised institutions as the international
community of which the US is its self-appointed figurehead. Civilisation still
requires a savagery against which to distinguish itself77 and the image of a
China which lacks the full standards of civilisation continues to pervade
American politics.78 Rising India, by virtue of its ontologically derived status
as a leader of the American-led community,79 affirms the right of the US to
its preeminent military position.
This is how the present the rebalance in its current form becomes logically
possible to the point where anything beyond procedural and strategic details
escapes meaningful debate. Despite broadly cooperative relations, China
exists as a strategic Other of the United States, a discursive construct from
which it cannot escape.80 Even at a time of national budget cuts, the
alternative of withdrawing or downsizing the United States 75,000-plus
troops in myriad regional bases and other facilities81 is conceived as no
alternative at all. As Table 2 shows, then, in the broadest sense the proof of
America is found in the underlying presupposition that different China,
constructed as a real or potential revisionist, rule-breaker, security threat and
so on is a challenge which can only be met by an equally imagined United
States as a leader and benevolent promotor of security and prosperity.
China is neither a paragon of diplomacy or helpless victim of US aggression;
its construction of new islands in disputed areas of the South China Sea for
example is disruptive and unnecessarily provocative. Yet American
performances of differentiation on which the rebalance relies are more than
functions of Chinas physical rise. Familiar rituals of the American self, which
establish the truth that China represents an ontological antagonist of the
United States and its values predate, and are independent of, Chinas
contemporary rise. Like Native Americans, Philippine insurgents, the Cold War
Soviet Union, and others, modern-day China by its very existence as China
both challenges and reaffirms the American self in the Asia Pacific and its
highly value-driven conceptions of security.

National security is ontologically intertwined with identity

the US has discursively constructed a rising China as an
Other to be pacified
Turner 16. (Oliver, Hallsworth Research Fellow of Political Economy @ University of
Manchester. China, India and the US Rebalance to the Asia Pacific: The Geopolitics of Rising
Identities, Geopolitics. June 1, 2016. Accessed via Taylor & Francis Online.)//CB

Logan, Swaine, Ross and others examine the US rebalance to the Asia Pacific
in an unproblematic world in which the United States is responding to a selfevidently rising China. Yet these actors are not self-evident or unproblematic.
Their realities (as threatening, benevolent, cooperative and so on) are
subjectively defined , and socially and imaginatively constructed. Like the

world they inhabit they are discursively spacialised or geo-graphed.12 The

Asia Pacific for example was imagined into existence as recently as the
1970s, through the agglomeration of East and South East Asia.13 Peoples and
places, moreover, are Othered from understandings of the self and for the
self, with China historically existing in uncivilised, idealised, and anachronistic
forms, among others, from the vantage point of the necessarily more
civilised, Enlightened, technological United States.14 This makes the
relationship between self and Other inherently co-constitutive; identity is
constituted in relation to difference and [d]ifference is constituted in relation
to identity.15
The United States contemporary geographical claims to the Asia Pacific,
then, like all claims, are geopolitical because they inscribe Others with
meanings which determine how they should be dealt.16 Discourse is thus not
simply descriptive but performative in that it produces the effects that it
names,17 fabricating global territories as sites of interest and material power.
Although often assumed to be innocent... geography [is]... a product of
histories of struggle between competing authorities over the power to organize, occupy and administer space.18
In asking how the rebalance is being enabled in its current form, the claim
here is not that direct causal lines can be convincingly drawn between
selected discourses and the implementation of policy. As Doty observes, the
explanations of why questions are incomplete because they tend to take for
granted the possibility that particular courses of action can happen, by
presupposing the backgrounds of discursive meaning so central to that
process. Asking how is thus to examine how certain meanings are produced
and attached to social subjects, creating discursive environments within
which practices are made possible and others are precluded.19 The aim here
then is to expose the discursive conditions which make ostensibly
problematic or contradictory policies around the rebalance possible and
which, as noted above, more traditional paradigms have difficulty explaining,
through an analysis of the political history of the production of truth and
knowledge about the realities of China, the United States, India, and so on.
It is to undermine the problematic self-evidences of the existing literature by
revealing how rituals of power arise, take shape, gain importance, and affect
contemporary politics.20 In tracing the genealogy of the rebalance, then, the
expectation is not to locate its physical origin in the rise of China, the Cold
War or elsewhere. It is to explore the constitution of its knowledges through a
history of the present in terms of its past, to show how the present has
become logically possible.21
Throughout US history, American expansionism has been less a policy than a
mode of being . Nation-states have consistently exhibited expansionist
tendencies, particularly those with the most land and resources. However,
brought into existence not by a people of common race or religion but by
disparate groups from all over the world, the US has arguably to a unique

extent always been forced to bind itself according to a set of defining ideals
and values, such as democracy, freedom, and liberty and, crucially, by the
knowledge that these values are universal.22 Only in a country where it is so
unclear what is American do people worry so much about the threat of things
un-American.23 Thus, the United States was born a redeemer nation, with
an inherent duty to export its identity for the global good.24 From the base of
13 originally colonies on the eastern seaboard, Thomas Jeffersons Empire of
Liberty was expected to civilise the continent: Where this progress will stop
no-one can say. Barbarism ... will in time, I trust, disappear from the Earth.25
It could be argued that this remains an especially powerful and persuasive
myth within the United States today because, unlike the imperial powers of
Europe in particular, the US quickly gained its own North American empire
and never lost it.
The barbarism Jefferson had first in mind was of course that of Native
Americans, and in its conflicts with them the US worked to secure and inflate
both its physical and ontological boundaries. Assessments of national
security , indeed, are heavily imbued with considerations of identity.
Ontological security is security not of the body but of the self, the subjective
sense of who one is, which enables and motivates action and choice.26
Ontological difference primes an identity to the possibility of aggression,27
and with the American self defined by powerful ideas and values it has
always correspond- ingly maintained highly value-driven conceptions of
security.
The desire to expand and seize resources was certainly a motivating drive,
but the US does not invade every country over which it boasts superiority.
Foreign Others are constructed in such ways as to make the application of
American power contingent upon understandings of who to invade and who
not.28 While it could have captured (and still could capture) some or all of
Canada for example, this was precluded by discursive regulations of
mainstream debate.29 Discursive mechanisms can establish truths which
dictate the boundaries of political possibility by making it all but impossible
to think beyond them .30 Holland argues that discourses achieve such a
controlling effect over foreign policy by becoming conceivable, resonant, and
dominant and nullifying oppositional voices.31 Discourses, indeed, can
become naturalised statements of fact,32 or common sense, a form of
knowledge which goes unchallenged from the assumption that it reflects
reality.33
Native Americans were no credible threat to US survival, but by their
existence as Native Americans and the largely uncontested ideas by which
they were defined, they challenged the core tenets of its identity. Moreover,
they were not passive constructions of an Enlightened American self. The two
were co-constitutive, with the uncivilised former active in the (re)
affirmation of the more civilised latter as it advanced across the continent.
Explains Trachtenberg: In this progress, this proof of America, the pro-

foundest role was reserved not for the abundance of land but for the fatal
presence of the Indian. . . Civilization required a savagery against which to
distinguish itself.34
US expeditions beyond its western coastal borders were a logical outcome of
the nations march to the Pacific,35 with understandings of potential
material gain still functions of a unique interpretive lens. For instance, in
1842 Britain forced China to lift restrictions on foreign trade and Beijing
reluctantly signed an unequal treaty. Two years later, and despite the US
being founded upon the rhetoric of self-determination and anti-imperialism,
Washington secured an identical agreement. Thus while nineteenth-century
China represented an economic opportunity for the United States, that
opportunity existed in the imagination of the American self, for the
American self.36 Japan was similarly opened up in 1854, and when the US
occupied the Philippines from around the turn of the twentieth century
Americans experiences with Native Americans and Mexicans provided the
operational framework for civilisation to be brought to the uncivilised
Filipinos.37
While peoples and places are Othered according to understandings about the
self however, identity cannot be essentialised to the point where it
identifiably exists, as positivists and some constructivists suggest.38 The
fluidity of discourse has thus allowed the US to redefine itself over time as
(combinations of) White, Enlightened, anti-communist, etc. The
significance of Others as non-White, exotic communist, etc., have
correspondingly evolved.39 During the early Cold War when the US first
embedded itself in East Asia, the Others to which it responded challenged the
American self in different ways than before. As already noted however, the
threats were equally manufactured.
US officials considered a Soviet attack unlikely and, in any case, the danger it
posed was not considered primarily of the military. The Soviet Union was not
a threatening actor which happened to be communist. In large part it was
threatening because it was communist, and a challenge to Americas selfproclaimed status as leader of the free world. Communism endangered the
very being of America, with its apparent threat to US private ownership code
for distinguishing civilised from savage.40 In 1949 the National Security
Council argued that China was unable to threaten the US for a generation or
more.41 Following its communist revolution later that year however Red
China joined the Soviet Union as an imminent danger. Simultaneously,
Taiwan became a recipient of American protection. A member of the free
world, Taiwan was anti-democratic and authoritarian until martial law was
lifted in 1987. Yet because Taiwan, like China, is unknowable outside of the
discourses which sustain it, this was largely irrelevant. How the United States
could logically invest in the security of an anti-democratic island of which few
Americans had heard is explained only by its status as an imaginative
geography attributed meaning by the anti-communist American self.42

The triumph of communism in 1970s Vietnam inflicted no significant adverse

effects on US security. Yet, Washington spent $170 billion dollars43 and
almost 50,000 American lives trying to defeat it.44 With no strategic or
economic value to the conflict there Americas involvement makes little sense
without recourse to the role of representational power which molded the
reality that such costs were necessary. Rituals of discursive power arose,
took shape, gained importance and affected contemporary politics from the
truth that Vietnam, the frontier of freedom,45 was a critical site of
American power.
At this point it is worth noting that centralising discourse to foreign policy
analysis is not to deny the existence of an external world, reduce reality to
the domain of language or dismiss the importance of material properties. It is
to say that the material world exists within, and as a function of, discourse,
since this is our primary means of making sense of it. The meanings we draw
from actors are filtered through lenses coloured by the biases, expectations
and experiences identities bring. Contemporary China is more physically able
than before to exert harm. However the China threat to US security is traced
as clearly to the fears and sensitivities of American identity as to Beijings
physical attributes. The US rebalance to the Asia Pacific, like the world around
it, does not exist outside of discourse but is constituted by it.
Rituals of discursive power still operate today, as evidenced by tracing the
rebalance not to the beginnings of a realpolitik saga when the US physically
established itself across the region, but through the constitution of
knowledges of foreign Others and the ontological security-seeking practices
of the American self. At the centre of these practices remain the (subjectively
defined) values of democracy, freedom and liberty, and their securitisation
for national survival. To demonstrate these assertions, this conceptual
framework provides escape from the kinds of problems highlighted in the
introduction which emanate from a traditional faith in the explanatory value
of shifts in material power in a seemingly self-evident world. It presents the
opportunity instead to explore the geopolitical claims to power which
continue to frame and regulate the potenti- alities of policy. As O Tuathail
explains, the act of geo-graphing defined the colonial period, but the
struggle between centralizing states and authoritative centers, on the one
hand, and rebellious margins and dissident cultures, on the other hand, is still
with us.46 The contemporary discursive logic of these claims to power is
now examined through a systemic analysis of US government statements on
the rebalance, to address the key silences of the literature identified at the
outset.

China rise discourse is grounded in notions of liberal

superioritya critical rethinking of our epistemology
toward China is required to reverse course
Zhang 13. (Youngjin, Professor, Institute of International Politics, Beijing. China
Anxiety: Discourse and Intellectual Challenges, Development Challenge. Vol. 44 No. 6.
November 4, 2013. Accessed via Wiley Online Library)//CB
*edited for ableist language

The discussion of China anxiety above suggests that a rising China has
profound implications for the search of a politically viable global order. It
contends that the rise of China remains a puzzle that needs to be carefully
unpacked in the design of a policy response and that the China knowledge
as represented in the dominant Anglo-American discourse is deficient and
inadequate. Unpacking and understanding the particular puzzle that China
represents implies three humbling intellectual challenges.
The first is to recognize that the dominant Anglo-American discourse on the
rise of China is problematic. Comprised of different representational
practices, it is informed by certain political commitments and cultural
assumptions that are blind to *insulated from some important aspects of the
changes that China has undergone, which have been integral to its rise. The
discourse has been purposefully oblivious of the fact that the fundamental
social and economic changes that China has undergone have triggered
anxieties among Chinese people and in Chinese society. It is also to
acknowledge not only that the rise of China will undoubtedly be one of the
great dramas of the twenty- first century (Ikenberry, 2008: 23), but also,
more importantly, that what the reforms in China are trying to accomplish is
unprecedented in world history. It is to appreciate the complexities and
contradictions associated with this human attempt at history making.
Delivering the second annual Barnett-Oksenberg lecture in Shanghai in 2006,
Kenneth Lieberthal (2006) observed that: What China is now attempting
simultaneous, rapid and very large scale marketization, urbanization,
privatization, and globalization is simply historically unprecedented in
scale or scope. No other country has ever undergone all four of these deeply
unsettling transitions simultaneously, and China is doing so at astonishing
speed. Taking urbanization as an example, according to a recent report by
McKinsey Global Institute (2012: 16), China is urbanizing on 100 times the
scale of Britain in the 18th century and at more than ten times the speed.
However, even Lieberthals list understates the scale of transformation China
is undergoing. To marketization, urbanization, privatization and globalization,
one might add industrialization, democratization, bureaucratization,
individualization, commodification, monetization and capitalization. China, in
other words, has been trying to accomplish the great transformation to
modernity on an exceptionally large scale and in a compressed timespan. Just
imagine British industrialization, the French Revolution, the American
democratic experiment, and German nation building all happening at the

same time in a territorially-bound state! Is it really surprising that this human

attempt at history making has been accompanied by social unrest and
upheavals, socio-economic dislocations, and political and economic
complexities and contradictions?
Second, critical reflections on the dominant Anglo-American discourse as
contingent representational practices should lead to the understanding that
unpacking the China puzzle requires a different kind of knowledge about
China. After all, China is always an amalgam of seeming contradictions. This
necessitates serious consideration of the nature and limits of the existing
knowledge on China which such representations construct and produce. It
should also be considered whether such representations, as a particular kind
of discursive practice, do not impose certain regularities on our
understanding of China. There is no knowledge political or otherwise
outside representation, Bhabha (1994: 43) once famously declared.
Accepting this dictum has two implications for knowl- edge construction
about the rise of China. The first refers to the respon- sibility to search for an
alternative and more reflective form of social knowledge about the rise of
China. The second refers to the need to ac- knowledge that China knowledge
is always inextricably linked with the general dynamism of Western
knowledge, desire and power in global politics (Pan, 2012: 152).
Third, the unfolding story of China rising may pose a fundamental challenge
to theoretical, philosophical, political and even epistemological assumptions
that are deeply embedded in the social sciences. The challenging question
now is no longer whether or not China can sustain its hybrid system,
combining authoritarian governance and capitalist economics, or whether it
will eventually have to democratize to continue its impressive economic
growth. It has become increasingly futile to speculate whether the Chinese
communist regime is the next to fall (Fukuyama, 2011). In the debate on the
China model of The Economist (2010), the proposition was simply: This house
believes China offers a better development model than the West. The fact
that 43 per cent of Economist readers voted for the motion after a full week
of debate offers considerable support for Stefan Halpers observation (Halper,
2010) that China is shrinking the idea of the West, as the Chi- nese
Communist Party has become indispensable . . . to the functioning of global
capitalism (Zheng, 2007: 20). Andrew Nathan (2003: 16) was candid that
authoritarian resilience in China may indeed suggest a more disturbing
possibility: that authoritarianism is a viable regime form even under
conditions of advanced modernization and integration with the world
economy. As a seasoned practitioner of liberal politics, Chris Patten articulates a similar sentiment when he looks toward the possible trajectories of
Indian and Chinese development. Which Asian tiger should we bet on, he
asks, India, with its software engineers and democracy, or China, with its
manufacturing prowess and its flaky totalitarianism? (Patten, 2006). He then
continues, The political romantic in me hopes that the answer is both. I keep
my fingers crossed that China will change without turmoil. But if that does not

happen, then for any liberal pluralist the comparative performances of India
and China in the future will be a test of the correctness of our political
philosophy (ibid.).

Their underlying assumptions about China are based on

faulty methods of threat construction at: we are not
containment though
Seng, 2 (Head of Research for Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies,
Singapore. PhD Tan See, What Fear Hath Wrought: Missile Hysteria and The
Writing of America, July 2002,
http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/WorkingPapers/WP28.PDF/MS)
In Kyles discourse we encounter, first, the partisan criticism levelled against the previous administration
for its evidently erroneous belief that China could be reformed by the civilizing influence of the West.
That this statement proceeds immediately from there to demonstrate why this theory hasnt proven out
is not to imply that the senator from Arizona therefore thinks that the entirety of the Clinton
Administrations purported logic is thereby flawed. Indeed, his discourse enacts precisely the same
exclusionary practice, present in the logic that he has just criticized, so as to position China as a lesser
subject, so to speak, relative to the US. Again, Butlers thoughts are helpful here: This exclusionary
matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject
beings, those who are not yet subjects, but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the
subject.75 I would suggest that Butlers abject beingswho are not yet subjects may possibly be

in much the same way that colonial or

Orientalist discourses produced subaltern subjects in order to be known, domesticated,
disciplined, conquered, governed, and of course civilized,76 the figuration of China in
construed as what I have termed lesser subjects. Hence,

Kyles discourse, evoking a genre of Otherness most moderns prefer to think has disappeared with the
passing of colonialism, is that of an uncivilized barbaric nation and people. The previous
Democratic administration, according to Kyle, erred in believing that the Chinese can be reformed and
civilized, but no such hope and it is, after all, a liberal hope need be entertained by conservatives who

This representation allows for the

simultaneous production of the properly constituted subject, America, where
human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and a track record of good neighbourliness
are fully embraced along with capitalism. Here we may note that although this inventory of criteria
know better than to even attempt to civilize the natives.

has long been associated with how Americans perceive themselves and, to be sure, how the world
perceives America, positively as well as negatively their own national history, however, is littered with as
many spectacular failures as there have been successes in these very areas. Further, what is interesting to
note, in terms of the redeployment or, to paraphrase Foucault, a re-incitement of Orientalist tropes in
security discourse, is the shift from the sorts of axiomatic and practical axes that structure interrelated
discourses on communism during and prior to the Cold War, to the axes that configure contemporary
readings of communism or, more precisely, the latest variant of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
As Campbell has pointed out, one of the dimensions upon which pivoted the construction of Soviet
communism as the Wests Other was that of the organizing of economic relations: notably, in its most
simplistic terms, central planning and collectivisation on the part of the communist bloc; and, laissez faire
cum mixed economy and private ownership on the part of the Free World.77 In the case of Senator Kyles
narrative which, in a key respect, reiterates and references norms and tropisms already present in
security discourses on China during the Clinton presidency that particular axis has become irrelevant in
the wake of Chinas embrace of western capitalism and growing integration with the global economy.78
a
replacement,
contemporary
security discourse has mobilized other
representational resources that, as we have seen, function within the senators discourse to
domesticate and constitute China as a threat . And although China is described therein as
For

being led by a communist regime, the choice of this particular adjective, deliberately circulated to invoke
past articulations of fear, no longer refers to the same thing, however. Hence, much as China has
embraced western capitalism, much as communism in its economic sense is no longer adhered to
throughout all of China, the discursive construction of Otherness, to the extent that the figuration of
communism is still being employed, now proceeds along the democratic/authoritarian axis, as well as

along other axes (elaborated upon earlier) around which rogue states are constituted.

From this

fragment of discourse reliant as it is on other discourses developmental, humanitarian, juridical,

ethical, economic, political, ideological, cultural, and of course security in order to be effective
emerges

a China that can be perceived in no other way other than

as a threat to the US. Kyle concludes with a stirring endorsement of what may be for others
symptomatic of American hubris and ethnocentricity: We should hold China up to the same standards of
proper behavior we have defined for other nations, and we should work for political change in Beijing,
unapologetically standing up for freedom and democracy79 words today that resonate ambivalently as
Washington wages its new war on terrorism in the name of freedom and democracy while, at the same
time, having to infringe upon the civil liberties of some Americans of particular ethno-religious

it is not entirely clear why Chinese military

modernization and buildup of forces opposite Taiwan , much less Beijings
threatening rhetoric as if Chinese leaders, unlike their US counterparts, do
not ever employ rhetoric for purposes of domestic consumption should
automatically lead Americans to the conclusion that China potentially poses a
growing threat to [the USs] national security. To its credit, the Bush Administration
has, for the most part, avoided any forthright labelling of China as a
threat, much less a clear and present danger . But the conditions of discursive
possibility for such labelling are clear and present, so much so that
policy options of containment, confrontation, and engagement, in an
important sense, do not constitute fundamentally distinct ways of conceptualising
China, but rather overlapping approaches to managing an already presumed
Other, both dangerous and threatening. As National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice has
argued, China is not a status quo power [because it] resents the role of the
United States in the Asia-Pacific region80 an ideological reduction that not only
constitutes China as incorrigibly revisionist, but refuses the possibility that China
may in fact accept (or, as a retired Chinese diplomat recently put it, tolerate81) the
international status quo owing to the benefits Beijing has accrued and desires
to continuing accruing, thanks largely to Americas apparent stabilizing
influence in the region.82 Moreover, as one analyst has averred, Beijing has a history of testing
backgrounds in the name of that war. Finally,

US presidents early to see what theyre made of.83 As in the above illustrations concerning rogue states,

exclusionary practices along various axiomatic and practical axes construct a particular
China that, in turn, legitimates the view of the Chinese and their missiles as threats.
All the while, the contemporaneous production and reproduction of a
particular American identity proceeds apace by way of the reiteration and
reference of boundary-producing performances that form the constitutive
outside of danger, threat, and vulnerability. Conclusion Few, to be sure, would doubt the
sincerity of Secretary Rumsfeld when he averred last June: I dont think vulnerability is a (viable)

Washingtons preoccupation with missile defense has much

to do with the Bush Administrations concern over what it perceives as the strategic
vulnerability of America to potential ballistic missile attack. Nonetheless, as important
as debates over whether or not the missile threat actually exists
are to the study and practice of international relations , what is equally if not more fundamental
is the question of how discourses of danger figure in the incessant writing of
America a particular and quite problematic identity that owes its
materiality to textual inscriptions of difference and Otherness . Missile hysteria
in US national security discourse cannot be simplistically reduced to the level of an
ideological explanation certainly not according to the classic formulation of Mannheims.85
Rather, what this paper has demonstrated is the centrality of difference and deferral in
policy.84 Clearly,

discourse to the identity of America

a discourse of danger, fear, and vulnerability

posed by potential missile attacks against the US from rogue states and accidental or
unauthorized missile launches from a particular China or Russia. The argument

maintained here has been that a particular representation of America does not exist apart from the very
differences that allegedly threaten that representation, just as the particular America of recent lore did not
exist apart from Cold War-related discourses of danger. If missile defence is (as Bauman, cited earlier, has
put it) the foolproof recipe for exorcising the ghosts or demons of missile hysteria, then Bushs national
security advisors are the exorcists and shamans as well as the constructors of national insecurity via
missile hysteria.86 However, the argument has not been that the Administration, the Rumsfeld
Commission, and other missile defence enthusiasts fabricated, ex nihilo, a ballistic missile threat against
the US by means of a singular, deliberate act, which is what some constructivists in international
relations, conspiracy theorists, and partisan Democrats an interesting if not motley collectivity would
have us believe. Nor has it been that language and discourse is everything as linguistic idealists would

through reiterative and coordinated practices by

which discourse produces the effects that it names, a certain
representation of America emerges wrought, as it were, by fear
and written into being by missile hysteria.
have us imagine. Rather,

link scs/naval war

Their predictions of geopolitical conflict in Asia-Pacific
waters reinforce the institutional structures that
undergird the state-centric order and marginalize
alternative methods of constructing martime space
Wirth 16 [Christian, Visiting Associate Professor at the Tohoku University
School of Law and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith University Asia
Institute, Securing the seas, securing the state: Hope, danger and the
politics of order in the Asia-Pacific, Political Geography, Volume 53, July
2016, Pages 7685]

Securing the civilization:

the geopolitics of maritime security

The China-focused power shift thesis is an outgrowth of thinking along the

lines of Huntington's Clash of Civilisations . Similar to the rise of Japan Inc. in the 1980s,
the rise of China discourse is a reaction to challenges to a particular notion
of the West. Tellingly, Huntington (2001) divided the Asia-Pacific between the continental Chinese
civilization on the one hand and the U.S.-centred West on the other hand. Japan, the only contemporary
state being a civilization of its own, sits uneasily in between. This requires special efforts on the part of
Japanese elites to secure their country in the West. Belonging to the West is determined by the degree of
adherence to the core norms of democracy and economic-technical development, the mythic system of
industrial modernity (O Tuathail, 2000, p. 25). It asserts that the developed industrial society with its
pattern of work and life, its production sectors, its thinking in categories of economic growth, its
understanding of science and technology and its forms of democracyscarcely make sense even to
consider surpassing (Beck, 1992, p. 11).

This metageographical geopolitical map of

East and West has become challenged by the economic rise of China, a
non-Western country ruled by a Communist Party, an unmistakable marker
of inherent otherness that seemingly excels and threatens to overtake the
West.
In East Asia this conception of global order essentially reproduces the Cold
War division along the perimeter of defense against the Communist Threat .
Then, the boundary of the West was represented by the line that a primary architect of the bipolar world,
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, drew in the early 1950s (Hara, 2006). It cut off Japan from the Asian
continent and made the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan contested territories at the frontlines of containment.

civilizational boundary continues to imbue disputed islets and waters

from the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles through the Yellow Sea (NLL),
the Sea of Japan/East Sea, the East China Sea, to the South China Sea and
extending to the Indian Ocean with (doubtful) strategic value; geopolitical thought engenders
the hierarchical sorting of places according to their strategic importance
(Agnew, 1998). Recently revived notions of the Indo-Pacific, of arcs and belts that, despite the
changing technology and nature of warfare, emphasize imperatives to secure island
chains and sea lanes of communication through seapower, suggests a
Today, this

heightened need for the defense of the postwar civilizational order.

Yet, for Chinese leaders much catching-up remains to be done: not entirely different from the postwar
period, the danger of being backward continues to spur China's top leaders to accelerate development
and reform, that is, the country's modernization. The increasingly common, dichotomous conviction that
land civilizations such as China's are inferior to maritime civilizations of the West and Japan (Xie, 2013)

reveals the importance of development for state legitimacy, both in the domestic and international
spheres. Thus, the transition to a Maritime Power is essential to the broader quest for national
rejuvenation through development. This explains the increasing value that is attached to maritime
territories; China defines core interests in disputed waters in a manner that had never applied to its land
border disputes' (Xie, 2013). Seapower, that is powerful maritime forces and a strong and therefore
prosperous state, has become indispensible for progressing on the Road to National Rejuvenation
(fuxingzhe lu) ( People's Daily, 2014 and Xinhua, 2012b). The Obama administration's rebalancing to Asia

Wary of China's rise , the U.S. strengthened its AsiaPacific alliances and pushed a reinvented Reagan era military doctrine, the
Air Sea Battle concept, while promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership freetrade agreement that excluded China . The Chinese leadership responded to
this U.S. rebalancing by promoting a New Silk Road through Central Asia and
a Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, also
known as the One Belt One Road initiative .10 This strategy of enhanced economic
development and political engagement went hand in hand with the construction
of military outposts in the South China Sea.
further reinforced this logic.

In an East Asia divided by civilizational fault lines, the impending Asian Century threatens to engulf and
thereby distance Japan from the U.S.-led Western world of progress and peace (Wirth, 2015). Thus,
starting in 2006, the Cold War era conception of an Arc of Freedom and Prosperity spanning from Northeast
Asia across the Western Pacific through to the Arabian Sea gained currency. With its emphasis on
universal values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law, and the market economy'
(Aso, 2006) this mental construct compensates for the ideational distance that had been lost between
Japan and Asia. The arc was soon replaced with a less abstract geopolitical map: the Indo-Pacific. The idea
was originally proposed by Karl Haushofer, an infamous German thinker, in the 1930s based on a journey

the
Indo-Pacific reinscribed danger along the boundary between an Eastern or
Asian China and a U.S.-led West that included the normalized that is
militarily more active mature maritime democracy of Japan (Abe, 2013). This
he had made to Japan some years earlier (Pan, 2014). Due to its maritime security political context,

sharpening division affected Korea.

The politics of power shift and rebalancing deepened the East-West divide that splits Korea at the 38th
parallel and extends along the NLL into the Yellow Sea. The Cheonan and the Yeonpyeong Island incidents
of 2010, discussed above, turned back the wheel of time on the civilizational scale, too. While the reinscription of danger in the course of these incidents prevented adaptations in the U.S.Japan alliance, it
enabled the strengthening of the U.S.Korea alliance by reversing earlier modifications ( Suh, 2010).
Regarding the former, consequent calls for stronger deterrence gave the death-knell to Japanese Prime
Minister Hatoyama's efforts to renegotiate controversial U.S. military basing arrangements on Okinawa and
helped to discredit his initiative to build an East Asian Community, eventually contributing to his cabinet's
downfall. Regarding the latter alliance, enhanced combined military manoeuvres, including the deployment
of U.S. carrier strike groups into the Yellow Sea for deterrence purposes, stirred anxieties in Beijing (China
Daily, 2010). Moreover, danger from North Korea provided the necessary arguments for South Korean
conservatives to further delay the return wartime operational control (OPCON) over South Korean armed
forces a legacy of the Korean War from the U.S. (Su, 2012). More generally, danger from the North
mandated the continuous pursuit of Korea's globalization (segyewha), that is, the strengthening of
national security including economic liberalization though free trade agreements ( State Department,
2012).
From the NLL in the Yellow Sea, the civilizational boundary became extended by danger reinscribed in the
East China Sea and the South China Sea. Inspired by their U.S. and Japanese peers' use of 19th century

Chinese strategists have also adopted the metaphor of island

chains (Li, 2009). The imagery of three roughly parallel lines parting the
Western Pacific from North to South and has several, partially contradictory
meanings. What these have in common is the effect of delineating the civilizational
boundary between East and West, that is, between China and the rest. First, island
chains stand for China's progress in naval reach and thus in attaining great
Mahanian concepts,

(maritime) power status. Second, island chains mark perimeters of defense a mental map and
strategic device for the delineation of battle space. Accordingly, island chains constitute barriers for the
potential attacker and it is imperative for the PLA Navy to control the maritime space at least until the
second chain, if it wants to safeguard the unity of the imagined Chinese nation, including Taiwan the
leadership's cardinal concern. This is what the U.S. and Japanese defense establishments label A2AD (Anti-

That A2AD had been a strategic idea in search of a threat

rather than a pre-existing threat in search of a name (Fravel & Twomey, 2015), points
to the mutual production of danger between China on the one hand and the
U.S. and Japan on the other hand. The third meaning, diametrically opposite to the second,
Access Area Denial).

casts island chains as barriers constraining Chinese access to the open seas of the Western Pacific and
Indian Ocean.
The latter construction links to another geopolitical danger that came to secure the boundary between
East and West is the concern with maritime transport routes, the lifelines for imagined national
economies, or so-called Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC). President Hu Jintao officially endorsed the
threat when he enunciated China's Malacca [Straits] Dilemma in November 2003 ( Shi, 2004). In a deeper

the dilemma represents the danger of China's arduous road of national

rejuvenation from the century of humiliation to modernity, that is, its
recognition as a member of the developed world being wilfully blocked.
Securing this road requires securing South China Sea not only for its
hydrocarbon resources, but also for its strategic value, in the face of U.S.
naval presence in particular. As a PLA representative elaborated, the danger that this
sense,

geopolitical rivalry produces strengthens the party-state; danger disciplines: tensions in Sino-U.S. relations
[such as over so-called freedom of navigation in the South China Sea] are helpful for China's ongoing
development and growth into a major world power. [Without] the struggle it would have been impossible
for China to achieve win-win cooperation based on equality, and the favourable situation we have today,
[because] the U.S. would have no respect for China's core interests' (Want China Times, 2015).
Mirroring Chinese fears, the narrow and shallow Malacca Strait is at the heart of all maritime security
concerns, a matter of life and death for Japan (Graham, 2006 and Kantei, 1994). Japanese conservatives'
efforts to enhance cooperation with Western powers are, however, not just a consequence of China's
military threat. Quoting from Rudyard Kipling's controversial poem The White Man's Burden, East is East,
and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, political heavyweight Aso Taro (2006) explicitly stated
that defense cooperation with the U.S. and with NATO, such as it is ostensibly required in the face of rising
China, is a welcome tool for alleviating Japan's position at the margins of the West. This position had
become increasingly ambiguous because the China-led rise of Asia and the simultaneous decline of Japan
a decline exacerbated by the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns of 11 March 2011 shifted the boundary of
the West eastward to gradually include China, while weakening its exclusiveness. The U.S.Japan alliance
became an alliance of hope for anchoring Japan in the peaceful and prosperous West (Abe, 2015).
Since the civilizational boundary runs through Korea at the 38th parallel and extends into the Yellow Sea,
geopolitically induced danger in other maritime areas is largely absent from Korean discourses. South
Korea is, according to a popular metaphor, a shrimp locked in between great power whales, and almost
completely dependent on imported hydrocarbon energy resources. Yet, the marginality of the concern with
SLOC security starkly contrasts with the alarmism in Chinese and Japanese official and academic
discourses. Korean security experts perceive SLOC security predominantly as a cooperative endeavour
and, unlike their Japanese peers, have so far not felt the need to use it as an argument for the
strengthening of their alliance with the U.S (Moon & Boo, 2013).11 These diverging views in Seoul suggest
that the differentiation from North Korea, rather than the opposition to China, suffices to securing South
Korea's belonging to the globalized West. Whereas geopolitical danger created the imperative for China
and Japan (and the U.S.) to build up seapower against the threat of the other, a blue water navy became
a necessity for South Korea to demonstrate its status as a globalized modern state (Lee, 2013).
Conclusion

The vast array of political issues reflected in maritime politics makes it a

mirror for the deconstruction of the current order. The perspective involving three
countries has shown how perceived threats relationally produced dangers reinforced key
ideational and institutional structures of the state-centred order established

in the postwar era of rapid development . Yet, the increasing use of material
practices of coercion or bribery (Reus-Smit, 2007, p. 158) such as it has become
apparent in maritime politics suggests a decline of this orders' legitimacy:
civilizational boundaries had to be secured through the strengthening of
existing military alliances and the reinforcement naval presence that protects
strategically important waters against the other; nations had to be secured
through the entrenchment of maritime territorial borders such they define
and are defined by officially endorsed historical narratives, and industrial
societies had to be secured through the extension of sovereign control over
marine resources and the state-led development of blue economies for the
continuation of national modernization projects.
the
future of order depends much more on governments' abilities to reconstitute
their states' social bases than the state-centred debates of power shift and
regionalism acknowledge: securing the seas meant to secure the modern
state. Threats in and from the seas not only provided explicit reasons for the
enhancement of state security apparatuses, including institutionalizations of
danger such as through the establishment in the case of South Korea the reinvigoration
An understanding of the nature of change along these three fault lines or boundaries suggests that

of National Security Councils and the introduction of new national security legislations in all three capitals

foreign threats also mandated enhanced efforts at patriotic

education, mass media (self-)censorship, and the deployment of other means
of social control for the disciplining of population s. Implicitly, danger produced in
the maritime sphere supported the postwar order in that it marginalized
alternative ways of thinking and excluded alternate courses of action . Danger,
discursively produced by state elites, erased the connecting elements of the maritime
sphere from debates about the future of order and made people forget that
the maritime sphere, just as the political order based on modern states, could
be constructed in radically different ways : The ocean can be experienced as a
space that is deeply connecting human communities across great distances
while at the same time connecting these communities with the natural
environment (Hau'ofa, 2008 and Mann Borgese, 1999). This is not to suggest utopian
alternates , but to acknowledge that the major paradigm of centrally-guided
state-led modernization and pertaining patters of work and life is just one
increasingly untenable mode of political organization .
in 2013. Ostensibly,

K Baudrillard

2NC China Rise Link

The world no longer operates through the logic of nation
building, but rather the over profusion of simulation - the
expo was not isolated to Shanghai, the entire globe is a
world fair a harmonius simulation of international
coherence where countries are isolated spatial and
cultural totalities, where the distinctions between visiting
the expo and being the expo are blurred until all notions
of subject are rendered incoherent, copies of copies
without originals, simulacra avatars in a virtual hyperreality This is the expo; have fun at the American
pavilion!
Nordin 12
(Astrid H.M. Nordin [Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and
Religion at Lancaster University], Time, Space and Multiplicity in Chinas
Harmonious World, 2012, The University of Manchester Library,
https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:186417, pages 149168)
TAKING BAUDRILLARD TO THE FAIR Above, I have examined different ways in which China is imagined as ahead in the historical queue that is posited at Expo 2010. However, as explained in the introduction to this
thesis, a most common way of imagining China elsewhere in discourse on the countrys relation to the world is as behind, or catching up. This way of understanding Chinas role in international politics has its roots

In recent years a key

Chinese strategy for negotiating both its claims to particularism and to being
a modern great power has been through the public diplomacy of mega
events, including Exp 2010.
As
symbols of a changing Chinese identity and outlook they have nonetheless
come to be understood as an important aspect of Chinese image
management
we need to take the next step
and understand Chinas mega events not only on the level of representation
and ideology, but also on the level of simulation and simulacra .
such a reading is that we need to stop imagining China as the other
country.
Roche has connected mega events as a phenomenon to a temporal
world view framed in terms of progress , the assumed responsibility to build
a diffuse western civilisation, and the assumed capacity to do so by actively
making history
mega-events are potentially
memorable because they are a special-kind of time-structuring institution in
modernity
time and modernity are negotiated by a
mega event, but rather than looking for this time-shaping capacity in the
scale and cyclical occurrence of events I examine one particular event, that is
Expo 2010.
in an imagination of Chinese experience as radically different to that of Western modernity as the other country (Chow, 1991: 81).

The success of Chinese mega events in altering international opinion is debatable (Manzenreiter, 2010: 29-48).

(Xin Xu, 2006; Brownell, 2008; Price and Dayan, 2008). In this section I argue that

106 I moreover argue that a

consequence of

Mega event genres came about in Western industrialising capitalist countries engaged in nation building and imperial consolidation of the late 19th century (Rydell, 1984: 8, 236; Roche,

2003: 100). Maurice

(Roche, 2003: 103, see also Roche, 1999: 1-31). He has further suggested

(Roche, 2003: 102, emphasis in original). Like Roche, I examine how

World fairs have been described as instrumental in creating the distinction between reality and representation, a dualism that has become central to the way we capture the modern

world (Mitchell, 1988; Harvey, 1996). In the remainder of this chapter I 106 Penelope Harvey has begun the work of reading world fairs as simulacra in Hybrids4of4Modernity:4
Anthropology,4the4Nation4State4and4the4Universal4Exhibition (1996). Recent publications have hinted at the possibility of such a reading of Chinese mega events. Most notably, Price and Dayans Owning4the4
Olympics4takes off in an imaginary of the Beijing Olympics as spectacle, festival, ritual, and finally as access to truth and concludes: Or should we rewrite MacAloons sequence in a style inspired by Baudrillard:
spectacle, festival, ritual, and finally simulacrum- (Dayan, 2008: 400). To my knowledge none have followed through with an empirical analysis of what such a reading may look like in the Chinese case. explore

I suggest that we read Expo

2010 not only as an exercise of nation-building, but as shaping also the
what happens when we read the world fair symbol of modernity through the work of Jean Baudrillard symbol of postmodernity.

imaginary of the world as a holistic unit. Expo 2010 could easily be read as a
representation of the world, as mimicry or a fake version of the real world
beyond its gates. I read it instead as simulation.
the world fair is
everywhere, that in fact the world is a fair,
reading of
the world fair as simulacrum
we may be mistaken to imagine Chinese
experience as radically other to that of Western modernity, or postmodernity
for that matter. It provides a different way of thinking about space, time and
subjectivity.
My key claim is that

and that this has serious consequences for the study thereof. The

shows how

Importantly, I argue that Baudrillard, who is often accused of being intellectually uncritical or irresponsible (for example by Norris, 1992), can help us think differently about

intellectual strategy in our study of such a simulacral harmonious world fair. I first outline Baudrillards discussions of the simulacrum and use this discussion to interrogate the being of the world fair. I argue that

the fair is not a fake copy of a real world, but that as simulation it marks the
breakdown of the distinction of the copy from the original, of the fair from the
world. Having asked where the fair is, arguing that fairness is everywhere,
anywhere and nowhere
, I next ask when the fair is. I show that the fair works through recycling, revival and reuse. I thereafter ask who is the fair through an exploration of

what happens to subjectivity in the interactive technologies of the fair. I examine how our simulation as subjects and objects of interactive technologies breaks both of these categories down. I argue that

being in the world fair turns us into simulacral avatars, circulated in virtual
hyper-reality.
the world we live
in has passed into the hyper-real, the generation by models of a real without
origin or reality
As a consequence the real will never again
have a chance to produce itself, but is replaced by a hyper-real where there
is no distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for
the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of
differences
I finally conclude through asking how to be fair in such a simulacral world fair. I argue that thinking the world in terms of its simulacral fairness does not need to rob us of

intellectual strategy, but that we can draw on Baudrillard to think of theory as challenge. To be simulacral, or where is the fair- Let us return to Baudrillards claim that

(Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 1). What has been lost, he argues, is metaphysics: [n]o more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept (1994 [1981]: 2).

Crucially, this is not a question of imitation, duplication or even parody, but of substitution.

(1994 [1981]: 3). What is at stake in Baudrillards analysis, then, is the reality principle: [t]o dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what

one doesnt have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality

In few
places is the question of the real and the imaginary, the true and the false,
the original and the fake as pertinent and as sensitive as in contemporary
China. The lack of respect in China for copyright
intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the true and the false, the real and the imaginary (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 3 ).

is a frequent bone of contention in its foreign relations. Domestic relations have

been shaken in recent years by the tainted milk scandal, where a number of infants were killed and hundreds of thousands fell ill from ingesting fake milk powder containing melamine (Barriaux, 2011). In IR,

underestimating the China threat because China may be

faking it, a wolf in sheeps clothing (
Expo 2010 was a highly
controlled space, yet it too had its own associated scandals of fakery
The Chinese national
pavilion was exposed to similar allegations of plagiarism, facing claims that it
looked a lot like the Japanese pavilion
The
biggest diplomatic scandal, nonetheless, surrounded the promotional tune
Waiting for You which was officially written for Expo 2010, its video featuring
all-Chinese superstars like Jackie Chan and Yao Ming. A scandal erupted as it
was revealed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Mayo Okamotos 1997
Japanese hit Stay the Way You Are.
voices are raised that worry about Westerners

Gang Lin, 2005: 1).

. Some suggested that

Expo 2010s mascot, Haibao, was a resurrection of American cartoon character Gumby, dubbing it The Gumbygate scandal (V Saxena, 2010).

from the 1992 Seville Expo, and equally similar to the Canadians pavilion at Montreal in 1967.

The irony was not lost on foreign commentators, with one commentator noting: [i]f the Shanghai Expo is the ultimate

showcase of an economy roaring to world dominance, then the organizers have selected a theme song that perfectly captures China on the cusp of the 21st century: strident, stirring and ripped off (Lewis, 2010).
The composer of the fair tune first strongly denied plagiarism allegations. Expo 2010 organisers thereafter suspended all use of the song citing copyright reasons and after a flurry of face-saving efforts Expo
2010 organisers, without admitting any problematic recycling, asked if they could please use Okamotos work. The songwriter, whose practically forgotten tune had suddenly returned to the top of Japanese charts,
selflessly acquiesced (Lewis, 2010). These revelations of scandalous fakery, whether on the low level of song writing or the high level of lethal state violence, are typically understood as a form of resistance. They
are taken to reveal the real4state of affairs. Some commentators extrapolate fakery to a Chinese characteristic, portraying resistance to elite-led fakery as a resistance to power. In a short film on Chinese netizens
and state power, blogger Wang Xiaofeng comments on Chinese fakes, with video shots of the Expo interspersed: China is a country who likes to make fake things. Lying is a virtue () of the Chinese. This is
evident in all kind of matters. Statistical numbers are fake () and whatever we create, even the good things, are fake. They [the PRC government] must say that some other countries are worse than China, to

The existence of mainstream media is based

on this process of the never-ending creation of fake. the government itself is
constantly creating this fake.
The
claim of the denouncers of scandalous fakery is that reality is being masked
the distinction between
make common people () think that China is the best place to live in ().

And

If you go to remote places in China you discover very shocking realities, people cant even find something to eat, but you still

think this country is a great country. So when you want to know the facts and get information you are actually challenging power. They are afraid of this (Wang Xiaofeng in Marianini and Zdzarski, 2011).

, and

the purpose of denunciation is to reveal this reality through exposing fakery. My claim in the reminder of this chapter, and in this thesis, is that

the real and the fake of the harmonious world is disappearing in a system of
self- referential signs.
the whole system becomes weightless , it is no
longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum not unreal, but a
simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for
itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference
Through this process:

(Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]:

5-6). In this respect, simulation is very different from representation.107 The way the latter is often used implies an equivalence of the sign and the real even if it is a utopian equivalence. Simulation, on the
contrary: stems from the Utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation
attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 6). As outlined in chapter 2,
Baudrillard explains this in terms of successive phases of the image that I reiterate here:108 [1] it is the reflection of a profound reality [2] it masks and denatures a profound reality [3] it masks the absence of

The shift from signs that

dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing is
crucial because the real is no longer what it once was. This
a profound reality [4] it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 6).

is the 107 Problematising the dichotomizing

relationship between the sign and the real is, of course, by no means originary with Baudrillard, but has a long and varied tradition from Friedrich Nietzsche (1999 [1872]) to Derrida (1981 [1972]). 108 As explained

we need not read Baudrillards successive phases of the image as

aligned in linear time. The era of simulation
need not be understood
as temporally fixed or discreet.
in chapter 2,

(1994 [1981]: 2)

significance of simulation, and its key effect is that in place of the truth we have a myriad of truths taking the shape of signs

of reality and myths of origin (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 6). Baudrillard uses the example of Disneyland to model the entangled orders of simulacra because he sees it primarily as a play of illusions and fantasy

The adults parallel to Disneyland in the contemporary era is the

world fair, the most recent, the biggest, the most expensive and the most
visited of which, again, was Expo 2010.
Expo 2010 is built up of
fantasm and as one of its feature books announces 100 years of Expo
dream
Expo 2010 was constructed as a
simulacrum of the world in ways that mix dreams with truth claims
(Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 12).

4Like Disneyland,

(Shanghai shibohui shiwu xietiaoju, 2009). At the same time, as will be seen in this chapter, Expo 2010 involved truth claims in an explicit way that Disneyland never has, which makes it

pertinent to examining both 1st and 2nd phase images and those of the 3rd and 4th phase.

(and, as I have argued above,

the claims that the dreams are indeed the true dreams of humanity and that these dreams will come true). Just like Disneyland, the Expo is ideological: digest of the Chinese way of life, panegyric of Chinese values,

the Chineseness of Expo 2010 can be

overemphasised in a format that is all about recycling.
idealised transposition of a contradictory reality. Nonetheless,

109 As Penelope Harvey writes: [i]n many ways the form of the

great exhibitions has been maintained despite the changing economic, social and political circumstances. Nation states displayed cultural artefacts and technological expertise in their individual pavilions, seeking to
educate and entertain the visiting public. The obligations of the organizers of a fair with universal status are less concerned with the actual bringing together of exhibitors from all over the globe than with enacting a

The nation state has been the

key cultural, political and economic unit through which both IR and world fairs
have traditionally told the tale of global community, and Expo 109 Indeed,
this paper, too, works through recycling
and intentionally so.
the spatial organisation of the Expo sites, in Shanghai and
online, is a starkly visual simulacrum of the purported organisation of the
international state system. Essentialised culture is encapsulated in the spatial
containers that are Expo pavilions, which in turn are encapsulated in
continents or regions, which in turn are a subdivision of the neatly bounded
and mapped world fair. These mappings are presented as neutral and
innocent, helpful and real some lines on a surface, fair and square
theme that simultaneously promotes the unity of mankind and the uniqueness of individual societies (Harvey, 1996: 35).

(of Baudrillard, Harvey, Expo 2010)

2010

recycles this conceptualisation. As I argue above,

(Expo Shanghai Online,

2010d). This particular model depends on a metaphor of scale by which the international community reproduces the form of its constituent parts: [b]oth part and whole function as self-contained, coherent,

This imaginary
reproduces units that differ from each other, but through a difference that is
one of equivalence. Whether we think of these units as natural or culturally
constructed, they are defined by precise boundaries in temporal, spatial and
cultural terms, they are distinct but equivalent entities.
bounded entities which are mutual transformations of each other through simple principles of aggregation and disaggregation (Harvey, 1996: 50).

This model of equivalence by difference was highly visible at

Expo 2010 as at previous world fairs (Harvey, 1996: 51). The world fair appears as a taxonomisation of equivalent national units with their own pavilion, listing in official guidebooks and dedicated day of cultural
display. The official Opening Celebration of Expo 2010 saw the parading of national flags, carried by Chinese youth made up to look as repetitions and copies of each other (CCTV Documentary, 2010). In this way
Expo 2010 recycled the form of Expo 1992 in Seville on which Harvey writes: [t]he Expo provided a concrete instance of endless replication, a cultural artefact built as if to demonstrate the possibilities and
limitations of an entirely consumerist world. Thus there was the appearance of choice, of multiple perspectives, yet the cultural forms on show were nevertheless clearly reformulations and repetitions of each other
and of previous events. Sameness and familiarity undermined the promise of difference (Harvey, 1996). What we learn from Baudrillard is that this second phase ideology moreover functions as a cover for a

The world fair,

in this vein, exists in order to hide that it is the real world, all of the real
world that is the fair.
The world fair
takes us further than Disneyland does, as it is not content with a country, but
must simulate the world always striving to be more inclusive, with Expo
simulation of the third order [or phase]: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the real country, all of real America that is Disneyland (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 12).

The presentation of the Expo world as imaginary and as a dream functions to make us think that the rest is real.

2010 priding itself on including pavilions of more countries than ever before,
an inclusion which cost the PRC government large sums in the form of
subsidies

(Xinhua, 2010e). In this way Expo 2010 marks a shift from ideological nation-building to worlding by simulation. Shanghai, China and the world that surround the Expo are no longer real,

but hyper-real, belonging now to the order of simulation: [i]t is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the
reality principle (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 12-13). The relation between Baudrillards different phases or orders those that dissimulate something and those that dissimulate that there is nothing comes to the
fore in the hyper-awareness and self-reflexivity of Expo 2010, as it had begun to do in previous world fairs (Harvey, 1996). There were frequent references to the self- representations of previous world fairs, in TV

In many instances of its

replication, the world fair reflected on itself as the exhibition of the exhibition
of the exhibition without end, as world fair exhibiting world fair.
programs, books and in the Expo museum at Expo 2010 (see for example Shanghai shibohui shiwu xietiaoju, 2009).

Key emblems, monuments and mascots

of previous fairs were brought together with the effect of appearing as self-referential signs, as copies of copies, representations of representations without original, signifiers of signifiers without signifieds, ad4
infinitum. In this way: [t]he exhibition represents the world, provides contexts and connections for an understanding of external realities, but its reflexivity simultaneously confuses or confounds the distinction of
insider/outsider, representation and reality (Harvey, 1996: 37). The implication is one of implosion of the careful construct and of moving to the fourth phase: it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its
own pure simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 6). Therefore, we must take the step beyond understanding how the exhibition represents the world and grapple with how the harmonious exhibition is the world,

Reading the Expo through Baudrillard thus turns the world into
fair and the fair into the world.
and the harmonious world the exhibition.

As I will continue to show throughout this chapter, the distinction between one as real or original and the other as fake or copy

can no longer be upheld. All4we4 have4are4versions4or4layers4of4the4harmonious4world/fair,4all4simulacra. This is why I argue with this chapter that we4need4to4take4the4step4and4study4it4as4such, rather
than limit ourselves to reading Chinas mega events purely on the level of representation and ideology, upholding the reality principle. The layers of simulacra are all world/fair, but cannot be4the fair in a fully
present way because Baudrillard, and others with him, have upset the dichotomisation of presence and absence.110 For this reason, the relation between the layers of simulacra is not that of a coherent system, of
stable exchange or of dialectics. The world/fair is simultaneously nowhere and now here. To be recycled, or when is the fair- I have asked in the previous section where the fair is and argued that fairness is
everywhere and anywhere that the world/fair is simultaneously nowhere and now here. I turn next to the temporality of simulacra in this formulation to ask when the fair is. Looking for the world/fair somewhere
and sometime beyond the dichotomisation of presence and absence I argue that the fair works through recycling, revival and reuse, that as a rem(a)inder, it is not new. What better place to start than with
beginnings and origins- We require a visible past, a visible continuum, a visible myth of origin, which reassures us about our end. 110 This problematique has been discussed among others by Jean-Luc Nancy (1991

Beginnings
were certainly important to displays of China at Expo 2010. Throughout the
Chinese national pavilion and dozens of Chinese regional pavilions, China is
described as the origin of the world, echoing wider media and academic
discourse in China.
[1983]), Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1988 [1980]) and Derrida (1976 [1967]). - 159 - Because finally we have never believed in them (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 10).

Various Chinese regional pavilions also pride China for figuring as the origin of (Chinese) civilisation. I use brackets here because there is some discrepancy or

ambiguity in terms of communicating such messages to Chinese speaking and English speaking audiences. In the Gansu province case, for example, which circles around its long history of more than 8000 years

This
kind of slippage between these terms appears throughout Expo 2010 and
makes Chinese civilisation appear coterminous with civilisation as such.
an ideological tool that served to make the
5000 years of uninterrupted Chinese civilisation appear real. This
uninterrupted history of harmony is part of the shift in legitimisation of CCP
rule from socialism to nationalism and Chinese characteristics (
of civilisation, a sign that reads in English Dadiwan Site in Qinan County Believed to Start the Chinese Civilization in Chinese language simply reads Civilization begins Qinan Dadiwan ().

This exhuming

of Chinese civilisation functioned as a cover for a simulation of the second phase, as

Cheung, 2012; Billioud, 2011).

Most importantly, however, this exhumation took pride of place because of a dream, behind this defunct power that it tries to annex, of an order that would have had nothing to do with it, and it dreams of it
because it exterminated it by exhuming it as its own past (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 10). IR scholars are performing this same exhuming ritual when we dream of the emerging Chinese school of IR theory as a

The fascination with this Chinese school resembles that which

Baudrillard describes of Renaissance Christians with American Indians. At the
beginning of the Christian colonising movement existed an instance of
bewilderment at the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the
Gospel
radical alternative to the West.111

(Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 10). In this 111 This West, on my understanding, is not real in the first place and the breakdown of any hard line between inside and outside makes such radical

dichotomization fall apart. - 160 - bewilderment we could either admit to the lack of universality of the Law, or exterminate the evidence to the contrary. The conversion or simple discovery of these different beings

This tactic of discovery and conversion as

a form of violent extermination of others has been acknowledged elsewhere
in IR scholarship
and it remains a tactic in PRC policy towards its
internal others in areas like Tibet and Xinjiang. Chinese policy towards its
ethnic minorities is presented as proof of the superiority of Chinese
civilisation: it produces more ethnics than the ethnics themselves were able
to do since the PRC state provides modern healthcare and scientific
development and exempts ethnic minorities from the one child policy.
Moreover the PRC state produces more ethnic ethnics than they themselves
had mustered. This promotion
is usually enough, for the Renaissance Christians as for scholars of IR, to slowly exterminate them.

(Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004)

112

of Chinese ethnic minorities through their regional pavilions lies at the heart of Expo 2010, a base from which the Chinese national

pavilion rises. Everywhere, the ethnic is exotically reproduced, recycled and rescreened. Everywhere happy, colourful and anachronistic ethnics sing, dance and rejoice in the greatness of the motherland, as in the
Xinjiang pavilion (a harmonious place). This overproduction is a means of destruction, a promotion and rescue which forms another step to their symbolic extermination. Nonetheless, the Expo is highly self-

As described above, it frequently uses clocks, hourglasses and

pendula to mark the countdown to horror scenarios of planetary destruction
in order to drum home its purported message of Better city, Better life. In
places it moreover explicitly favours recycling over linearity.
aware in its use of time.

112 This is particularly the case in

current PRC policy towards the Western Autonomous Regions of Tibet and Xinjiang where splittism is considered a challenge to the integrity of the PRC state (Barabantseva, 2011). - 161 - Figure 6: A linear
model will result in excessive pollution and waste (Source: Astrid Nordin) The theme pavilion City4being uses similar metaphors to Baudrillard to conceive of time, that of biological life cycles, metabolism,

circulation and recycling. These are said to be key to the proper functioning of the system. This pavilion is evocatively constructed as a sewerage system interspersed with circulating billboard messages of

It is explicit about its rejection of linear models

A cyclical model will feature greater recycling
and less waste.
[h]istory will not come to an end since the leftovers, all the leftovers
the Church, communism, ethnic groups, conflicts, ideologies are
indefinitely recyclable History has only wrenched itself from cyclical time to
fall into the order of the recyclable
In places, the world/fair appears
unreflexive, as attempting to reinstate the reality of its teleological progress.
In other aspects, however, its reflexive hyper-aware recycling seems to show
how it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure
simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 6). Not only, then, can the world no
longer be represented by the fair, but more importantly it can no longer be
fairly re-presented, it can no longer be made present in time and space as
some full or complete presence.
we need to take the next step and start analyzing Chinas mega events also
as simulacra. The world/fair is simultaneously nowhere and now here. The
world/fair is recycled. To be screened, or who is the fairthe interactive technologies of the world/fair
in
an order of recycling, the technologies that make us simultaneously subjects
and objects make the distinction between subject and object untenable with
the effect of making these categories unworkable.
interconnection.

, as in a pair of diagrammatical signs of which the first reads A

linear model will result in excessive pollution and waste, and the second reads

Figure 7: A cyclical model will feature greater recycling and less waste (Source: Astrid Nordin) In this way Expo 2010, like Baudrillard, engages directly with claims to

the end of history:

(Coulter, 2004). Through these examples we can see the world/fair engaged in different phases of simulation, which

can be understood as dissimulating something, but also as dissimulating that there is nothing.

As such, it is not enough to remain within a simple framework of representation and ideology in our analyses thereof, but

Having asked in previous sections where and when the fair

is I turn to the question of who is the fair. What happens to subjectivity in

- I argue that

It is clear that our embodiment matters in the world fair as it differentiates

between ways of being in the world/fair along lines of class, race, gender and so on. At the Shanghai Expo, where well over 90% of visitors were Chinese, the ability to identify me as a fair-skinned visitor from the
outside made me an immediate part of the exhibited exotica (my being fair made me the fair, so to speak. And simultaneously the reverse was true, my fairness positioned me as though outside the fair, observing
it/them). But Expo 2010 goes much further in making us part of the fair, through the layers of interactive technologies by which the fair itself emerges. In the first instance, we are an active part of this emergence,
we can plan, steer and shape the world/fair, we are the subjects of its emergence. Visitors are often asked to actively participate in Expo 2010. Indeed, interactivity is a key feature of many pavilions and different
layers of the world/fair, and one pavilion is expressly dedicated to displaying it. Here, photographs from Expo 2010 and its preparation, submitted via the Expo 2010 website, are circulated on screens. Participants
can also send blessings and wishes for Expo 2010 from various websites and have them screened in the pavilion, surrounded by cards with wishes and blessings written by its visitors. In a wishing tree we are
encouraged to write wishes on colourful paper, fold it into airplanes and throw it into an artificial tree. In parallel, the Online Expo 2010 has many venues where ones avatar can leave wishes, such as the Vanke
pavilion or the Expo4dream4home discussed above. On a multimedia display stand visitors to Expo 2010 can arrange various building models and simultaneously a 3D image of its layout will appear on a
background wall, surrounded by previous excellent works. In this way, a sign for the multimedia display tells us, You could become one of the designers of a future city. In Shanghais own pavilion at Expo 2010
the Shanghai forever image wall, consisting of revolving triangles and more than 15000 photographs featuring Shanghai, is a product of mass participation and joint creation ( ) intended to

Images of images are

everywhere and we can be their creators. Nonetheless, in subjecting the
world/fair to our gaze and our actions, we are simultaneously subjected by it.
Our bodies are not only in the world/fair, they are the world fair, as the fair is
our bodies, simultaneously watching and watched, displaying and displayed.
expound the design conception of New horizons forever (or in Chinese Shanghai eternally marches towards a new horizon, ).

Often our recognition as participants rests on our willingness to take on specific subject positions tellingly, the English title of the pavilion for popular participation is Citizens initiative pavilion, interpellating us
as citizens of the mapped state system on display. It is through such citizenship that we are allowed recognition in the world/fair. Indeed, the different layers of simulacra share citizenship regimes as a key feature,
invoked through the passport. At previous world fairs, at the Shanghai Expo, and at the online version of Expo 2010 we can have a passport in which we collect visa stamps from the pavilions visited. At points, we
have to actively change ourselves to make us acceptable as subjects in order to have our fair share. Passing through the world/fair we are screened and tested. This screening echoes for the subject/object
dichotomy (the who) the collapse we saw in previous sections of the here/there (the where) and the now/then (the when). As Richard Lane has observed with regards to Baudrillard: there is an interpenetration of the
screen metaphor with the notion of everything being on the surface here, including the friendly surveillance which simultaneously shows the people under surveillance on television screens, which leads to a
collapsing of perspectival space (the removal of the gap or distance both spatially and temporally between the viewer and the viewed) (Lane, 2000: 42). Here interpenetration is total, including of architectural and
geographical space. The layers of simulacra cannot be separated. All of Expo 2010, the Shanghai Expo and its virtual replica, Shanghai, China, all of the world/fair are indistinguishable as a total functional screen of
activities (Baudrillard, 1994 [1981]: 76). In this way all of the world/fair operates through screening, in every sense of the word. The example above of the excluded travel guide moreover exemplifies how our
participation in the citizenship regimes of the world/fair is conditional she was stopped at the border because she had not paid the fare. Indeed, the world/fair is most helpful in persuading us that we can (and
should) adjust our selves to pass its screening. In a book dedicated to Expo etiquette prospective visitors to the world/fair are most helpfully taught how to modify their behaviour and their bodies (Xu Bo, 2009).
Chinese readers can learn amongst other things how to greet, walk, shake hands, sit, queue and care for their personal hygiene in a polite manner. They can read about how to go to karaoke, drink coffee with
foreigners and host them in their home according to global decorum. In an appendix we find a taxonomy of etiquette, outlining customs country by country, from the US to Egypt (2009: 147-71). One drawn image,
for example, shows one man (who we can assume, from the big nose in profile, is a Westerner) who sits nicely at his table with one glass and one plate on which he is attacking a square (perhaps a piece of toast)
with his knife and fork. He looks with bewilderment and a hint of fear at another man or boy who smiles a big smile as he carries his second plate to the table, where he has already assembled two glasses, various
fruits and one more plate overflowing with food (in the mish-mash of which we can identify various fruits, a whole fish, a crab and some shrimp). The pictures caption instructs its Chinese readers the civilised
manner of partaking of the fare of the fair through a rhyming slogan: big eyes, small stomach, cannot finish the delicious fare (yan4da4duzi4xiao,4meiwei4chi4bu4liao ) (2009: 62). The
concluding chapter of the book, on how to be a refined and well mannered Expo person, clearly conceives of such politeness in terms of the return to an original state. We are encouraged to utilize the Shanghai
Expo as a historical turning point, to make - 166 - every one of us change into politely speaking Expo people and after being told about the Expos demand on the etiquette of the people of the host country to
through the Expo make elegant etiquette return to China (2009: 141-6, emphasis added). Thus, being a civilised citizen of the world/fair is not about being more like somebody else, but about being more like your

moving through the world/fair our bodies are more explicitly

hi- jacked by screening, made to do things potentially against our will
proliferated, taken apart.
self; it is a question of recycling. At other points,

(and indeed through or

in advance thereof),

The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region case for example shows visitors images captured and repeatedly displayed on

screens. As citizens of the world/fair our bodies are captured and displayed as copy upon copy throughout Expo 2010, media and academic work, including this thesis. Figure 8: Screened in Ningxia autonomous
region case (Source: Astrid Nordin) This hijacking technology is not simply in the hands of states. Siemens powerfully commoditised Chinese cultural heritage and the Chinese national modernisation project in its
Tianxia4yi4jia pavilion discussed above. To English language audiences the pavilion was marketed through the name We4are4the4world, a name which aptly brings out the recycling nature of the fair through

which also showcases the ambiguity of the question who is

the world/fair. The we is ambiguous and inside the pavilion the capacity in
which we become the world/fair is telling
reviving Michael Jacksons old hit song, but

as described above, our faces pass through a computer program and are recycled on screen

as avatars, transformed, singing along with the Expo 2010 theme tune. Our avatars in the virtual version of Expo 2010 are, to some extent at least, a consequence of our volition and choice, albeit screened and
monitored with a mandatory Chinese ID number registration. In Siemens corporate version of All- under-heaven we are the world/fair without being told in what our stardom will consist.

Our

avatars are exposed as pre-programmed, as playing a pre-scribed role, and

this play has only one script, one where we all sing along with the Chinese
tune.

From these examples we can see two kinds of technologies operating in the world/fair: ones that represent the world and ones that operate through simulation, provoking a reflexive awareness of

artificiality and simulacra: [t]he first of these conceives of technology as enabler, and is the concept that lies behind the notion of the Expo as a technology of nationhood. Technology enables a perspective that can
produce wholeness from fragmentation. Expo enables the appearance of the world as a whole, through the revelation of the fragments that are cut from it and the apparent celebration of their differences (Harvey,

Expo 2010s use of interactive technologies moved away from

representations of the world as we know it to be. It celebrated instead the
possibility of producing a simulated world, copies of copies (dis)interested in
an original: a world of images more real than the real, a fascination with the
hyper-real, pretensions to realities that were never there in the first place or
at least not in such perfect form, concrete manifestations of abstract
possibilities [that] produce the essence of life itself as outcome not origin
w]e are living through a movement from an
organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system from all
work to all play, a deadly game
1996: 123).

(Harvey,

1996: 123). The examples discussed here reaffirm a rather sinister side to simulation: [

(Haraway, 1991: 161). Through these technologies of the world/fair, not only our concepts of spatiality and temporality, but

also our notions of subject and object, are displaced. Being in a simulacral world/fair is simulacral being. As such, we need to move beyond analyses of Chinese mega events through concepts of simple

We are copies of copies without

original, simulacral avatars in virtual hyper-reality. The Expo is us: our bodies,
our dreams, our future.
representation and reality, and work to understand how they operate through simulation and simulacra.

Their harmonious conception of Chinese rise to the global

stage is nothing but the integration of China into the
Westphalian order of integral reality you should be
skeptical of academic claims of this nature as they
circulate academia.
Nordin 12
(Astrid H.M. Nordin [Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and
Religion at Lancaster University], Time, Space and Multiplicity in Chinas
Harmonious World, 2012, The University of Manchester Library,
https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:186417, pages 135149)
Chinas rise is commonly described in terms of inevitable destiny
because of history. Meanwhile, the PRC leadership is strictly managing the imagined
form and significance of such a rise. Since 2008 China has placed new focus on
using mega events to shape the expectations of domestic and international
audiences, and thus to shape the future. Such mega events included the 2008 Olympic
games, the 2009 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, as well as Expo
2010 Shanghai China. Expo 2010 was seen as an expression of and tool for
the building of harmonious world by Chinese academics (for example Zou Keyuan, 2011: 11). Yan
Xuetongs Ancient4 Chinese4Thought4was adorned with an image of the Chinese national pavilion at the Expo on its book cover. The Expo was also
associated with harmony by the party- state. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
stuck closely to the official articulation of harmonious world when he
described the Shanghai Expo as: an encyclopedia lying open on the land and
a magnificent painting showcasing the integration and harmony of diverse
cultures The World Expo is a vivid demonstration of the diversity of human
We have seen how

civilizations. The Shanghai Expo has offered a broad stage for inter-cultural
exchanges and integration, reminding us that we live in a divers and colorful
world (Wen Jiabao, 2010a). He continued to argue that the Expo had fully demonstrated harmony to be
the common aspiration of mankind, and that the Expo was above national,
ethnic and religious boundaries. This, to Premier Wen, was why [i]t is important that countries work together to build a
harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity (Wen Jiabao, 2010a). The Expo was made possible by Chinas
economic rise, but was also part of establishing the story of such a rise as
true, and of narrating a future where China rises to be the benevolent leader
of a new harmonious world order. In this chapter I examine the way ideas of Chinas role as leader of
a harmonious world proliferated at Expo 2010. I go about this examination in two parts. In the first part I trace the
two cosmologies that I outlined in the academic literatures in the previous chapter, unit- based and holistic spatial imaginaries. I continue to argue, now in the context
of Expo 2010, that the two cosmologies are not mutually exclusive. I show how they are deployed at the Expo in ways that reinforce one another by ordering spatial
difference through teleological time. The two cosmologies are worked out in conjunction with one another at Expo 2010, in ways that support a particular discourse on
China and the world, prescriptive of a particular future where China leads a new harmonious world order. Like some of the academic literatures examined in the previous

the Expo worldview portrays itself as from the world or from

everywhere, yet insists on specifically Chinese terms and experience, and
on the singular Chinas Future as the (harmonious) worlds Future. On this
view, there is only one Future, and it does not welcome contestation. Having recognised
this effect of harmony at the Expo, I argue in the second part that we need to move beyond the reading of mega
events as simple representation and ideology and read it also as simulation
and simulacra. Reading the Chinese world fair as a simulacrum of world order
can provide different ways of relating the West to its other country China. I
examine this relation through asking what it means to be the fair: Where is the world fair- When is the world fairWho is the world fair- Reading the world/fair as simulacrum disrupts the fairs
notions of inside and outside, now and then, subject and object to the point
where these terms are no longer workable. What we end up with is not the many turning into the one, with the
chapter,

convergence of others into the self. Instead, what remains is a fragmented plethora of truth, not the unreal but the hyper-real. My reading of Expo 2010 as simulacra
examines some of the distinctions implied in the where,4when4and4who4of the world/fair, and shows that we may be better off not taking our distinctions so seriously.
THE TWO COSMOLOGIES AND HARMONY AT EXPO 2010 Expo 2010 took place in the tradition of scientific and industrial world fairs following on from the

Expo 2010 has been read in China to

symbolise the greatness and international significance of China indeed, it
was the largest, most expensive, and most visited of its kind (Barboza, 2010; Xinhua, 2010d;
Great4Exhibition4of4Industries4of4All4Nations that was held in London in 1851.

2010e). The 73 million visitors who passed through the Expo in Shanghai during the six months it was officially open as world fair would be even greater if one counted the
subsequent visitors attracted to the sites permanent monuments (the Chinese national pavilion for example has been turned into a permanent museum) and to the online
version of Expo 2010, where ones avatar can stroll through a virtual 3D replica of the site, visit pavilions and partake in numerous exhibitions as well as interact with other

Unit-based spatial imaginaries are immediately obvious at the Expo.

Space at the Expo is typically imagined in a modernist manner as a flat
surface upon which humans act, as a stage or platform. As for the unitbased territorialisation of this surface, the Expo site is organised as an
imagined state system, divided into bounded continents of national pavilions.
visitors.

At the online Expo, we can take guided tours of pavilions and exhibitions and get a virtual passport in which we can collect visa stamps from the various territories visited.

Expo visitors, who may never have been abroad and may not own a
passport in the outside world, can get a multitude of visa stamps and play
at being well-travelled. It is an enactment of the world that pretends such international life is readily available and unrestricted. It
draws up borders and barriers in order to let them be crossed, but by no
means erased or blurred. Through turning visa collection into a game, border controls appear innocent at the same time as their indisputable
Likewise, at the

natural existence between states is reinforced. However, it becomes clear that partaking in this game of open borders is conditional. At the Expo, I met a young travel
guide, who visited the Expo with 60 tourists from Beijing. While her group went into the Pavilion of Future (subtitled Dream inspires the future) and had their pretend
passports stamped, she waited ticketless outside, stopped at the border because she did not have the right papers. Simultaneously, the external nation-state system
echoed in citizenship regimes inside the Expo when producing a real passport meant one could jump pavilion queues for the pavilion of the country that had issued it.

This way of conceiving of space in terms of bordered units was marked

throughout the Expo. Chinas own pavilion of regions was no exception,
subdivided into regional containers of culture many even look like boxes
with essentialised culture exhibited inside, like the virtual version of the
Tibetan pavilion below. Although obviously steeped in a unit-based spatial

imaginary, these bounded units are also enveloped in the holistic celestial
order of one-worldness. The key terms in holistic imaginaries are the allencompassing or all-inclusive, that with no outside or no exception,
network, and of course Tianxia. The holistic imagination of everything as
always already connected to everything else appears in the room in
Urbanian4Pavilion themed Connection(). This room is based on the
scientific theory called six degrees spatial theory, which states that no two
people are separated by more than 6 relationships (Xu Wei, 2010: 27). On the
ceiling a film is projected showing selected peoples movements on a map.
Portraits of people appear in circles connected by lines to more and more
other people/circles until they form a web or network on the round screen,
bringing your mind to the Earth and thus the idea that all people of the world
are connected (Xu Wei, 2010: 27). There is no one outside the network.
Moreover, this claim is backed up by science, and thus requires no further
explanation. The Pavilion of City Being describes the city as a living being or organism, focusing on the theme of shengming (), meaning life, being or
bios. The holistic imagination implied in this idea of the city as one body or life is clear from slogans such as city being multiplies endlessly, held together by superseding
cycles and the unceasing adjustment between people and city maintains city life harmonious, healthy city life requires our common protection (Xu Wei, 2010: 40). The
Pavilion4of4Urban4Planet moreover draws on a holistic spatial imaginary to tell us on the Road of Solutions how the resolution to the worlds problems can be found:
[t]he seasons change, settlement becomes cities and trading routes develop into a completely4networked4world Only with open mind and allWinclusive4view can we
bring the hope of sustainable growth to our planet Earth (emphasis added). These references to the organically connected single organism or body, the web of
connections with no outside and the completely networked world with an all inclusive view all provide the basis of a holistic spatial imaginary. Moreover, the comments

From
the above we see that imaginations of China in the world at the Expo draw on
both unit-based and holistic notions of space. This instance shows the two spatial imaginaries coexisting in
above indicate that this holistic imaginary is taken to demand the harmonious balance of all and our common protection. Classification in time and space

contemporary China, and so refutes the idea that one would be superseding the other. I next look closer at how they work in tandem at the Expo. Throughout the Expo,
classification of space is marked. We have seen it above in the unit-based form of mapping state units, as well as that of regions as containers of culture. The

holistic Tianxia concept does not refer to the jigsaw-puzzled space of the unitbased imaginary, but nonetheless classifies and sequentialises through a
centre/periphery, civilised/barbarian divide. Tianxia ordering is similar to the
Expo site centred on the Chinese pavilion. Similarly, the comparison and contrasting of East and West is ever
present. In a film screened at the Pavilion of City Being we are watched from the screen by the eyes of Eastern people, the eyes of Western people (Xu Wei, 2010: 49).
Likewise, Pre- show Hall in the Pavilion4of4Footprint shows ideal cities as they have been imagined in the East and in the West. Dreaming of a better future is

The division of space into

civilisational/regional/national units is aligned with division of time into eras,
often in its ancient/modern guise. This is where, just as in much academic
discourse, we see evidence of the alignment of dichotomized here/there,
modern/ancient and subject/object (cf. Fabian, 1983). As a number of developing countries could not fund their own
described as universal, or eternal (), but similarities end there and juxtaposition takes over.

participation in Expo 2010, Chinese subsidies to these countries ensured there were more state and organisation pavilions, 246, than at any previous Expo (Xinhua,

The vastly different budgets and scales meant pavilions gave the
impression of a developmental or aspirational classification, in a visual
display of global inequality. As in global development, China financially
supported less-developed states in a way that visually emphasised the
impressive scale and central location of the Chinese pavilion and reaffirmed
China as a helper and developer ahead of the helped and developing
states at the Expo site periphery, such as the African Joint and Pacific Joint
pavilions. This convening of others differentiated in space through time is crystallised in Urbanian4Pavilion, which shows the morning rituals of families taken
2010e).

to represent five continents. It shows the similarities of getting up, washing, brushing teeth and so on of people from these different spatial/cultural units. However, the
sequentialisation in time is obvious. The man from Rotterdam has an electric toothbrush and the Chinese middleclass office worker wears new pyjamas in his modern
bathroom, whereas the bathroom in Rio de Janeiro looks worn and dirty. In this way spatial difference is aligned in temporal sequence. We all do the same thing; it is just

Spatial division is thus not only conceived

as classification of space, but also as classification in time. This classification
is moreover conceived of in a time that runs towards a particular end. Clock
time running out or towards the future is emphasised at the Shanghai train
stations Expo clock tower, as well as throughout the Expo itself by feature
that some are a bit behind on the road to Modernisation and Development.

clocks, ticking pendula and hourglasses.

The intertwining of temporal notions with strong assertions as to what Chinese

identity is in world affairs is clear from an introduction to the Expo on its official website, ringing with familiarity with the official party-line: [w]ith a long civilisation, China
favours international exchange and loves world peace. China owes its successful bid for the World Exposition in 2010 to the international communitys support for and
confidence in its reform and opening-up. The Exposition will be the first registered World Exposition in a developing country, which gives expression to the expectations the
worlds people place on Chinas future development We count on the continuing attention, support and participation of all the peace-loving countries (Expo 2010

In this context, depicting China as original confers on it a status as

fore-runner of developing countries, conveniently forgetting the 1949 Haiti
Expo (Expo 2010 Shanghai China, 2006a; Bureau International des
Expositions, 2011).4 Chinas present and future direction is frequently
depicted in terms of a return to an original or always intended state. The
Expo itself is typically portrayed as the fulfilment (led by the PRC/CCP partystate) of an ancient Chinese dream. This portrayal appears in articles (Expo 2010 Shanghai China, 2006b), in books such as
Shanghai China, 2008).

1004 years4of4Expo4dream4()4(Shanghai shibohui shiwu xietiaoju, 2009), and in the World Expo Museum that looks back at more than 150 years of historical

I believe
in Chinas actual strength, a country that has 5000 years of civilisation must
be able to produce glory once more (Expo Shanghai Online, 2010c). Finally, the feature film of the Xinjiang regional pavilion
demonstrates how classification of time and space come together into a particular,
goal-oriented progress under PRC leadership : [Xinjiang is] the communication
land of four great civilisations of the world ... It once was the road of bonze
Xuanzang, the silk road, the road of western expedition and the road of
eastern return The great transformation of 60 years is the evidence of our
diligence and intelligence Today, the assistance from the motherland also
lights up the passion in Xinjiang (Expo Shanghai Online, 2010g) .104 This quote brings together
preparation for the Shanghai Expo. Online commentators echo such narratives, and one commentator on the Expo online Dream Wall comments that

the numerous elements that make possible the problematic imagination of self-other relations that is under discussion in this thesis. A separation between civilisations is
posited. Xinjiang is subsequently conceived of as a place where these separate civilisations meet. Progress is imagined as a return to a state that once was, and that is
now returning through Chinese diligence in its (re)civilising mission. One can only wonder at the irony as the motherlands assistance lights up the passion in Xinjiang
after the brutal ethnic clashes in the years running up to the Expo (Xinhua, 2009d). 104 Bonze Xuan Zang is a Buddhist sage from Chinese literary classic Journey to the
West. Metaphors of lines, circles, spirals and pendula may be used to describe this temporality, but may be misleading as they change significance in their combined use
(cf. Gell, 1992). Analogue clock time, for instance, may be circular if used as for example a toy, but indicates linear time flow when allied with other concepts, such as
civilisational progress and development. The point of Chinas progress/return (to its rightful place as world leader) is not whether we describe it using the metaphor of the

key importance is instead the way it operates through a

classification of time and space: and there is no doubt as to where we
are/should be heading. The point is that these temporalities support each
other and lead towards the same ultimate endpoint. The Future is one where
China leads a new harmonious world order Chinese discussions surrounding
the Expo typically conferred on it one central meaning it was a sign of
Chinas legitimate rise to world leadership. Wishes for Chinese superiority similarly appeared in the online VankePavilion, the corporate pavilion for a large Chinese property developer. One commentator wished that in 2049 China is in leading position
in the world () and another exclaimed that by then China has really changed into a great cultural country, ten thousand countries come to
circle or the line. Of

pay tribute ()105 (Expo Shanghai Online, 2010f). A majority of participants in the Expos Dream wall expressed love for the motherland, the Expo and Shanghai,
with one exclaiming,

Go Expo, China is invincible (Go Expo ) (Expo Shanghai Online, 2010c). Key to justifying this Chinese

world leadership is depicting such a world as harmonious, in accordance with the harmonious world discourse. The Expo is steeped in this language of harmony. Chinas

the lotus flowers

blossom, symbolising the harmonious and glorious future of Chinese cities
national pavilion begins with the film Harmonious China (hexie4Zhongguo4 ) and concludes with telling us

(Expo Shanghai Online, 2010a). The Xinjiang pavilion is labelled Xinjiang a 105 This set formulation is commonly used to indicate great power. - 146 - harmonious land.
We go to the Expo on a harmonious train, to visit Harmony Tower, and if we hurt ourselves we can have a band-aid from the harmonious first aid kit. Figure 5: Harmonious

2010: A life at
ease A peaceful and stable job Wishing the great motherland is increasingly
thriving and prosperous My family is increasingly harmonious and happy
2049: There is no war in any corner of the world There is no discrimination
Peaceful getting along and also wish that when we reach that time people
from every corner of the world can all profoundly understand China (Expo
Shanghai Online, 2010f). We see here a mixing of ideas of harmony with
notions of a good personal life, a thriving China, and an image of peacefully
connected world citizens who comprehend China. Again, there is an emphasis
first aid kit (Source: Astrid Nordin) The language of harmony is also prevalent among the wishes of Vanke4Pavilion. One participant wishes:

on making foreigners understand China.

A blurb for Pavilion4of4Futures harmony sculpture similarly personalizes

world harmony: core concept of traditional Chinese culture: only the harmony of the world and all things constitute the harmony of humans spirit. Just as in Zhaos

. There can be no outside to the system, or it will fail. All

things must be incorporated. This, the claim is, is a distinctly Chinese idea of
world order. Throughout all of these imaginings of China in the (harmonious) world, the two spatial imaginaries combine in ways that repeat the problems
outlined with regards to academic discourse, making difficult the imagination of others as coeval. The unit- based spatial imaginary
provides a condition of possibility of Chinese particularism. Throughout the
Chinese pavilions at the Expo, China is the very origin of civilisation and of
the world it is where the first fire burnt, the first bird flew, and the superior
values of Confucian harmony originated. The holistic spatial imaginary becomes key to imagining the need for spreading
this civilisation, and for the Chinese civilising mission we currently observe around the world (Nyri, 2006). The holistic idea of space is
core to construing the rise of China to leadership of a harmonious world as
peaceful and beneficial to all. In actuality, there is no outside, everything is
always already connected to everything else, and the view of the Chinese
party elite is a view from nowhere, or a view from the world. Many of these themes are
Tianxia, we require the harmony of all things

echoed through non-Chinese pavilions at the Expo, including the two spatial imaginaries, the goal-oriented notion of time, East-West juxtaposition and a reliance on blurry

many foreign states, organisations and enterprises used the

Expo to exhibit their willingness to buy into the Chinese discourse on
harmonious world, allowing it prominence of place in the way they name,
speak of and write of their own pavilions. Harmony in particular is given
legitimacy through frequent use in foreign pavilions, such as Harmonious
relations (Pacific joint pavilion), Feel the harmony (Austria), Harmony of
the heart, harmony of the skills (Japan), and so on. While some academic analyses of Chinese foreign policy
notions of civilisation. Notably,

argue that the PRC is being socialised into values and norms of international society (Johnston, 2008), the Expo showed the opposite: outsiders competing to be most

Non-Chinese corporate pavilions too helped

reinforce and legitimate this particular version of harmony with reference to
Chinese history. One example was the pavilion called Tianxia yi4jia (): Tianxia one
family. This pavilion was German multinational Siemens corporate pavilion, showcasing its technology through the aspirational middle class future of interactive
attentive to and accommodating of Chinas purported self- image.

games and wine coolers that will apparently be available to Chinese people in 2015. Entering Siemens harmonious and commercialised rendition of Tianxia we are

As in a miracle of scientific development our faces appear on a film

screen at the exit, manipulated to sing together in harmony with the Expo
theme tune. The simulation is explained at a sign at the pavillion entrance: [a]fter scanning and
capturing the users facial features, the image will be recorded and
transformed into an avatar allowing users to feel as if they are starring in a
pre-programmed movie or video How will this technology better our livesProvides an entertaining experience for people to play a role in a movie or
become a star. Everyone has the chance to stand in the spotlight. Chinas
Future, in this commercialised version as in its official one, provides the time
and space for us all to be stars in the spotlight . It is worth recalling here the organisers own reading where the
photographed.

Expo took place because of the international communitys support for and confidence in [Chinas] reform and opening-up, expressing the expectations the worlds
people place on Chinas future development with China sternly counting on the continuing attention, support and participation of all the peace-loving countries (Expo
2010 Shanghai China, 2008). In this version of the Future World we are allowed into the spotlight on the condition that we become avatars that sing simultaneously in one
voice to the Chinese melody. Foreclosing futures at Expo 2010 In this part of the chapter I have argued that the holistic and unit-based cosmologies, or spatial imaginaries,
were prominent at Expo 2010, aligning classified units of time/space in sequence. They are simultaneously deployed in ways that support a particular discourse on China
and the World, prescriptive of a particular future where China leads a new harmonious world order. World fairs were from the outset an exercise where self/other relations
were heavily tinted by imperialism (Rydell, 1984). Today, although the specific selves and others reproduced by the Expo may be somewhat different their fundamental
manoeuvre is the same. The articulation of time/space with the narrative of harmony is problematic, again and despite itself, because it marginalises concepts of coeval

Just like Zhaos Tianxia, the Expo

worldview portrays itself as from the world or from everywhere, yet
insists on specifically Chinese terms and experience. This is reinforced as
the Expo shows an already nationalistic domestic audience a China that
rightfully rises to the place of world leader and the folly of anyone imagining
that such a rise would be less than beneficial to all. This is buttressed by
multiplicities and difference. Others are not properly different, they are just behind.

readings of foreign involvement and investment in the Expo as endorsements

of the Chinese model for its rise, and is taken as a showcase for how
harmonious the world is under Chinese leadership. The Expo worldview portrays itself as from the world,
yet insists on the singular Chinas Future as the (Harmonious) Worlds Future. On this view, there is only one Future, and it does not welcome contestation. I propose that
we can refuse scripting our songs in the pre-programmed manner suggested by predominant imaginings at the Expo. It can indeed be possible to meet the challenge of
coeval multiplicities that time and space should present us with. In the next section I begin to unsettle the dominant rendition of time, space and China in the world by way
of reading it through the work of Jean Baudrillard.

Debate is disappearing in the proliferation of harmony

the holistic spacitalization of the globe produces a
domesticticated form of difference that eliminates the
possibility for the truly Other harmony is not
meaningless, but imbued with hyper-meaning more
meaningful than meaningful, which paradoxically makes
harmony terminate only its own disappearance we
should engage in onco-operative logic to make possible
coeval multiplicies that undermine the perfectibility of
debate in a process that pushes through to its
disappearance this is the only political act left bet on
the form of (go)
Nordin 12
(Astrid H.M. Nordin [Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and
Religion at Lancaster University], Time, Space and Multiplicity in Chinas
Harmonious World, 2012, The University of Manchester Library,
https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:186417, pages 214231)
Thinking about multiplicity has remained a key
conundrum for those who want to think about global politics as truly political.
Conclusion: Futures of harmony and coeval multiplicities

One attempt at managing and grappling with the opportunities and challenges that multiplicity presents us with from beyond the European
imperium has been recent Chinese thinking about harmony and the concept of harmonious world (Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004: ix).

This thesis is to be read in the context of recently undertaken efforts to

understand this and other normative challenges to the way we imagine the
times, spaces and differences of the contemporary world. Its prime task has
been to scrutinise the way assumptions about time, space and multiplicity
play out in this challenge to what is perceived as Western ways of imagining
world order. With such a challenge in mind, this thesis has embarked on a disruptive reading of the multiplicity problematique in the
harmonious world concept. THE CONTINUED PROLIFERATION OF HARMONY Before moving on to discuss the findings of this thesis and their

The term harmonious

world has been written into the CCP constitution and numerous official
strategy documents. Foreign envoys to the PRC have been taken on
Confucius-themed trips by the Chinese state, accompanied by a number of
the academic promoters of harmonious world through whom the envoys
acquired a deeper understanding of Chinas traditional cultural philosophy
such as seeking for harmony but not uniformity, living in harmony with all
other nations (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, 2011a). The PRC establishment has also
implications for thinking multiplicity, what for the immediate future of harmonious world-

urged other countries to be harmonious, recently for example in relation to

Vietnam (Xinhua, 2012d), the Maldives (Xinhua, 2012a) and India (Xinhua, 2012b). Harmonious world has
moreover been well received by a number of foreign dignitaries, and spread into their own language use. Leaders who have recently used it in
ways that resonate with the sinister side we have seen to harmony include Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad (CNTV, 2012). At the same time,
it has not been given positive play only by alleged rogues of the international arena, but by more widely accepted players such as Kevin
Rudd, Australias former minister of foreign affairs. He confidently declared, in a speech given to the Asia Society in New York in 2012: there is
something in Chinas concept of a harmonious world; which the US, the rest of the region and the rest of the world can work with (Rudd,

UN officials, such as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, have also promoted

harmony in official settings (Xinhua, 2012c). Such endorsement has been played up by Chinese officials, for example Li
2012).

Baodong, Chinese permanent representative to the UN, who refers to the spirit of cultural diversity and harmony in the world advocated by

Harmonious world and the

traditional strategic culture with which it has been associated, then, has not
only been deeply entrenched in PRC policy documents, but has also been
given positive play by other influential individuals and organisations. This supports
Joseph Chengs recent expectation that it will remain a major element of Chinas public diplomacy in the foreseeable future: [a]s
China pursues an increasingly ambitious role in regional leadership and
international institution-building, its publicity work on building a harmonious
world will likely be stepped up (Cheng, 2012: 183). As explained at the outset of this thesis, every generation of
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations (Xinhua, 2012e).

Chinese leadership has used tifa to stamp their mark on Chinese politics. Xi Jinping, who is expected to take over leadership after Hu Jintao in
2012, is not known as a great friend of Hu (he was not Hus preferred candidate for succession). We can therefore expect that Xi will introduce

However, Xi
has also made use of the language of harmony in the run-up to his take-over,
for example when he headed a large Central Government delegation to the
Tibet Autonomous Region Between 17 and 22 July 2011, for events to mark
the 60th Anniversary of what the party-state calls the peaceful liberation of
Tibet.155 Moreover, he was responsible for the inauguration ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where harmony played a central
other tifa during his time in leadership, and some may expect a decline of harmonious world after he comes to power.

role. For these reasons, it seems reasonable to expect that Hus stepping down from the presidency is not the last we will hear of harmonious

The cat-and-mouse game with online

dissidents also continues. A search for banned terms on Sina Weibo on 2 November 2011 showed
the term (xienongchang) to be censored. The term refers to a series of political cartoons with the English name Hexie farm. This
hexie refers to the double meaning of harmony and rivercrabs, with the
Chinese title using the term for crab (xie ) in this formulation. The
cartoons focus on censorship and violent promotion of harmonious policies
and have become widespread amongst other things through the China Digital
Times project (Hernandez, 2011; Hexie Farm, 2011). New puns are constantly created, then
censored, giving rise to further new terms. The rivercrabs have now morphed
into new humorous national treasure words that are deployed in egao
culture online. One such replacement word for harmony/rivercrabs is
shuichan (), meaning aquatic product. Another is the evocative near-homonym hxi or hxu (
), which means to drink blood, an expression particularly popular in Taiwan. Through such terms,
harmony/rivercrabs continue to morph, metastasise and proliferate. In my
examination of what harmonious world does in terms of imagining time
space and multiplicity, I set out in this thesis to answer three sub-questions. I will now return to each of these questions in turn, and will
world in Chinese policy or academic discourse (see Nordin, 2011: 17).

make three key claims with regards to the doings of harmony. 155 For examples of Xi promoting harmony during the celebration, see the full
text (Xi Jinping, 2011a: 2, 3, 4) or a full length CCTV recording (Xi Jinping, 2011b: 12:27, 24:06, 33:24) of his speech at the anniversary
ceremony . Xis speech was also preceded by others stressing civilizational harmony (wenming4hexie ), and followed by a parade
displaying ethnic harmony and unity under the theme building harmony, as can be seen in additional CCTV recordings of the ceremony. The
broadcast ends by an assertion of the expected harmonious life of ethnic unity under the central government (CCTV, 2011: 19:19, 20:20,
138:50, 147:14). - 217 - HARMONIOUS WORLD REPEATS AN ALLOCHRONISING LOGIC The first question I asked in the introduction to this
thesis was: what are the assumptions behind and political consequences of different ways of articulating harmonious world, particularly in
terms of ordering time and space- With regards to this question, this thesis has found that much of the official and academic discourse on
harmonious world deploys terms drawn from ancient Chinese thought. We have seen particular emphasis on concepts drawn from pre-Qin
texts, such as All-under heaven (Tianxia4 ), the kingly way (wangdao4 ), the hegemonic way (badao ), harmonism

have examined on harmonious world, these

terms are aligned with concepts of traditional Western IR and fall back on
(hehe4zhuyi4 ), and so on. Yet, in the texts I

the spatial categories of traditional IR theories. Through these spatial

categories, the debates reflect different ways of imagining the space of a
harmonious world. Some articulations rely on a unit-based political
cosmology, including civilizations, regions and most of all bounded states.
Others are based in holistic assumptions, deploying IR-terms such as
network space, holistic globalisation (specifically quanqiu4yitihua4 ) and an
understanding of Tianxia that similarly conceives of a space where everything
is already connected to everything else. Both of these ways of imagining
space, however, marry their spatialisations with conventional notions of
modernization and progress, or turning the bad into the good, that imply a
linear or teleological time. Such imaginations organise difference in epochs, and binaries such as advanced/behind,
modern/traditional, developed/developing and bad/good. Through these concepts multiplicity is aligned
in a historical queue with Chinese elites at the head. I have shown these
terms and spatio-temporal imaginings to reappear in party-state documents,
academic writing and the visualisations of harmonious world at Expo In all these
contexts, I have shown some of the things harmonious world does at the level of ideology, as a second order simulacrum. At this level, the
key doing of harmonious world in the contexts I examined is the allochronic organisation of time, space and multiplicity. This is politically
problematic because it reduces not only the challenge, but the opportunity that time and space could and should present us with: coeval
multiplicities. This thesis thus presents a rebuttal of claims that harmonious world and associated concepts such as All-under-heaven and

Despite claims to the

contrary, they fail to escape the problematic organisation of difference that
they criticise in Western thought. Through examining the unit-based and holistic political cosmologies in
the kingly way present a better alternative to more conventional ideas of world order.

academic discourse and at Expo 2010 I have moreover contributed to a rebuttal of the idea that these two imaginaries are mutually exclusive
with one replacing the other. I have shown instead that they are both deployed together in contemporary China in ways that, although in

Therefore, although there is

some tension between different terms and spatialisations used to articulate
harmonious world, the diversity of accounts is undermined in that they all fall
back on allochronising assumptions. In that sense, what they all do is produce
a domesticated form of difference that denies an open future. Through these findings this
certain tension, are mutually supportive in underpinning an allochronic world imaginary.

thesis intervenes in two fields. For students of China and its foreign policy, it provides a rebuttal of some important claims by Chinese scholars
and policy makers. The most important implication is that scholars must stop treating China as the other country. China is not behind as
some infant being socialised, as Johnston and others would have it. Nor is it a radical other to the West that naturally escapes the problems
of allochronic thought, as in Chinese exceptionalist narratives. For scholars interested in time, space and multiplicity in IR, and in the

this thesis provides a detailed study of a concept from

China, a context that has hitherto received less attention in these debates
than it merits. For these debates, it cautions against the allure of China as an
Other or alternative that escapes the traps of allochronic thinking. HARMONISATION
allochrony problematique in particular,

WILL NOT TAKE PLACE The second question I asked in the introduction to this thesis was: what is the overall effect of the proliferation of
harmony in contemporary Chinese society- After officially launching harmonious world in 2005, the PRC party-state has continued spurring

Through the studies of this thesis we have

seen harmonious world amass so much meaning that the possibility of
using it as a meaningful concept has disappeared. Its meaning has been
shown to designate total co-operation, total subjugation, total respect for
difference, total control, totally moral leadership, and so on. Where other
scholars have tried to find out its true meaning, I have shown instead how the
illusion of this possibility has disappeared not into meaninglessness, but
into what we may by Baudrillardean analogy think of as transparent or
obscene hyper-meaning, the more meaningful than the meaningful. As an
effect of this mass proliferation the term has become overripe and collapsed
under the weight of its own meaning to the point where it can no longer
function as an ideal. The fantasy and the reality of harmonious world have
collapsed into one another and the seduction of the concept has been lost.
the concepts proliferation in Chinese and international contexts.

The proliferation of harmony has made it disappear as an imagined

metaphysical possibility. Harmonization has not taken place, is not taking
place and will not take place. This effect of the proliferation of harmony, as a third order simulacrum of simulation
rather than second order ideology, is a key finding. Some scholars have called for caution with regards to the oppressive, homogenising and
depoliticising aspect of Chinese harmonization. In the context of its hyper- meaning, resistance to harmony and harmonious world must be

The threat posed by proliferating harmonisation is not only the

policing of boundaries that I describe on the level of ideology: cracking down
on dissidents, blocking words online, preventing people from tweeting.
Indeed, we might want to reflect on why many of us are so obsessed with
condemning the limitation of communication: will the revolution really be
tweeted- Instead, a more spectacular threat to harmony comes from the
excess of communicating harmony itself, which destroys the illusion of the
real in the harmony concept. In that sense the mass- communication of
harmony is dangerous on a larger metaphysical plane. The CCP is working towards a controlled
thought of differently.

hierarchical harmony, but it becomes something completely different. They are the ones robbing harmony of its illusion. Baudrillard writes
concerning the Gulf War which he famously declared was not taking place that it is stupid to be for or against the war if you do not for one

Therefore, those who promote the truth

of it as a war and historical event are the warmongers, the accomplices
(Baudrillard, 1991; Merrin, 1994: 440). On the same logic, it is misplaced to be for or against
harmony. We have seen various aspects of the hyper- meaning of harmony
and harmonisation (total co-operation, total subjugation, total respect for difference, totally moral leadership, total control).
None of these things are taking place in contemporary China or its relations
to the world. If something is taking place, it is not harmony or harmonisation.
moment question its credibility or level of reality (Baudrillard, 1991).

My task here has not been to promote or oppose this term, but rather to question its credibility and indeed level of reality. This insight and its
implications for resistance is a key contribution of this thesis to both of the fields in which I intervene. Moreover, through reading harmonious
world in terms of both its doing and its undoing this thesis suggests a novel way in which scholars of Chinese international relations may
study foreign policy concepts in general and Chinese set phrases in particular. It thus contributes to the literatures on doing things with
words in Chinese politics through emphasising ways of examining the undoings that doings necessarily imply. It moreover contributes to
literatures on time, space and multiplicity in IR through showing how the thought of Derrida and Baudrillard may help us shake up the manner

That
harmony is not taking place, I stress once more, does not mean it does not
have effects. Two academic commentators claim with regards to its policy formulation that it is implicit that a harmonious world is
in which questions of multiplicity and politics can be formulated, and foreign policy concepts can be studied in terms of excess.

one where supposed heresies are tolerated (Guo Sujian and Blanchard, 2008b: 4). Based on the finding that harmonious world repeats an

Relegating heresies (or

others) to a different time from our own means denying them coevalness in
the here-now. The implication in the texts I have examined is that they will
eventually come around to seeing the world as we do, which in turn has
depoliticising effects.THERE IS AN APORIA AT THE HEART OF HARMONIOUS WORLD AND COEVAL MULTIPLICITIES The third
allochronising logic, I am less certain that such tolerance is implied in - 221 - harmonious world.

and final question I asked in the introduction to this thesis was: are there contradictions in or between different articulations of harmonious
world- How are these made visible- I have argued above that the diversity of more or less official accounts of a harmonious world is
undermined in that they all fall back on allochronising assumptions. However, I have also shown how official language migrates and morphs in
different contexts through which harmonious world is undone resisted, deconstructed and changed by its very own logic. A reading of
Chinas mega events as simulacra of both the second and third order (ideology and simulation) has revealed how notions of inside/outside,
now/then and subject/object come apart. Moreover, dissident play with the concept of harmony makes visible certain contradictions, both
between different articulations of harmonious world and within the concept itself. I began this thesis by outlining the two contradictory
imperatives of multiplicity, the threat and the promise of difference. Throughout the examination of harmonious world, this term has revealed

Harmony must by definition be universal,

but its universalisation by definition makes harmony impossible. Bart Rockman has
itself as mirroring the aporetic imperatives of coeval multiplicity.

suggested that harmony may be a necessary glue without which neither a society nor a polity are sustainable, but that complete social
harmony is ultimately suffocating and illiberal (Rockman, 2010: 207). Jacob Torfing has also taken issue with predominant understandings of

post-political vision of politics and governance

that tends to eliminate power and antagonism (Torfing, 2010: 257). Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe,
he understands such a post-political vision as both theoretically
unsustainable and politically dangerous. It is theoretically unsustainable
because power and antagonism are inevitable features of the political
dimensions of politics, as I have described the political (cf. Baudrillard, 1990 [1983]: 162, 182).
harmony in Southeast Asia that he argues present a

politics: cannot be reduced to a question of translating diverging

interests into effective [win-win] policy solutions, since that can be done in an
entirely de- politicized fashion, for example, by applying a particular decisionmaking rule, relying on a certain rationality or appealing to a set of
undisputed virtues and values. Of course, politics always invokes particular
rules, rationalities and values, but the political dimension of politics is
precisely what escapes all this (Torfing, 2010: 257-8). Politics, then, unavoidably
involves a choice that means eliminating alternative options. Moreover,
although we base our decisions on reasons and may have strong motivations
for choosing what we choose, we will never be able to provide an ultimate
ground for any given choice in Derridean terms, such grounds will always be indefinitely
deferred. Therefore, the ultimate decision will have to rely on a skilful
combination of rhetorical strategies and the use of force (Torfing, 2010: 258). The acts
of exclusion that politics necessarily entails will produce antagonism between
those who identify with the included options and those who do not. For this
reason, the attempt by the promoters of harmony to dissociate harmonious
politics from the exercise of power, force and the production of antagonism,
claiming a harmony where everyone wins and no-one looses, is bound to fail.
Moreover, the post-political vision of politics and harmony is politically
dangerous because its denial of antagonism will tend to alienate those
excluded from consideration those who count as no-one when everyone
wins and no-one loses. This, Torfing writes, will tend to displace antagonistic struggles from the realm of the political to the
Therefore

realm of morals, where conflicts are based on non-negotiable values and the manifestation of authentic identities (Torfing, 2010: 258).

Such non- negotiable values would be the opposite of the co-operative

harmony sought. To both Rockman and Torfing, then, complete or perfect
harmony will defeat harmony and create disharmony. We have seen how numerous scholars
argue that in order to imagine harmony, we need to imagine heterogeneity and multiplicity. We can now add that the allochronic organisation
of difference eliminates the multiplicity in the here-now that is a prerequisite for harmony. In order to imagine heterogeneity and multiplicity
we need to delineate here and there, now and then in the fathomable aspect of diffrance that enables us to think spacing between multiple

to imagine multiplicity we need borders and

boundaries, or else all we have is the unitary One. Such is language. Rockman goes
on to argue that although homogeneity of ascriptive identities like ethnicity, language or religion may enhance
harmony, the more important factor for constructing harmony is the
capacity to assimilate, absorb and integrate perspectives to a common
ground for accommodation of diversity (Rockman, 2010: 207). But the point is that the
idea of a common ground can only be built on exclusion, that such
assimilation, absorption and integration is what reduces the otherness of the
Other to only fathomable, definable and co-operative difference. To Baudrillard, it is
the modern Wests refusal of such alterity that spawns nostalgia for the
Other, who is now always already domesticated, a mass version of what we
saw in presentations of ethnics at Expo 2010 ( Baudrillard, 1990 [1987]: 145, 165). We have
seen the same refusal of alterity in Chinese discourses on harmonious world,
with its focus on proper understanding and the insistence on difference in
order to make the world colourful. It is the same nostalgia and exhuming
ritual that IR scholars perform when dreaming of an emerging Chinese
school of IR theory as a radical alternative to the West. Despite this nostalgia, we must not
try to foster difference. It is counterproductive to call for respecting the difference of
marginalized groups, as this relies on a presumption that they need to have
trajectories la Massey. In other words, in order

an Identity and makes the marginal valued as such, thus leaving the marginal
where they are, in place. Difference must therefore be rejected, to some
extent at least, in favour of greater otherness or alterity : otherness [laltrit] is not the same
thing as difference. One might even say that difference is what destroys otherness
(Baudrillard, 1993 [1990]: 127, 131). Thus the other must stay Other, separate, perhaps difficult
to understand, uncontrollable (Hegarty, 2004: 118). In this way, Baudrillard advocates more exoticism, an interest
in the other as Other, and as beyond assimilation into proper understanding in the present. To Hutchings this absence of a proper
understanding of the other in the present is no doubt disappointing, because other times are indeed identified with an unpresentable

the Other can only remain Other

insofar as we resist the urge to attempt such assimilation. The alternative
would be to fall back into the One and loose sight of the possibility of
harmony and coeval multiplicities. What we have, then, is an aporia at the
heart of both coeval multiplicities and of harmonious world, despite attempts
to conceal it. I have aimed through this thesis to question little by little the attempts at harmonious organisation of time and space
supplement and thus with that which cannot be known, but only hoped for. But

as belonging to the sovereign that this concealment has implied. I have examined different strategies of reading and using harmony in ways
that reveal the excluded other of Hus harmony discord and competition to be always already there within the political and linguistic system

the harmonious system is not based on co-operation or

non co-operation, but works according to an onco-operative logic: the quasisuicidal logic of cancer and the (auto)immune . Ultimately, the aim and most
important contribution of this thesis has been to bring the onco-operative
uncertainty of the political back into the harmonious world concept in order to
elucidate the negotiation of danger and necessity of multiplicity. (IM)POSSIBLE COEVAL
of harmony itself. I have argued that

MULTIPLICITIES; (IM)POSSIBLE HARMONY With regards to the main question of this thesis, I thus make three interrelated claims about what

harmonious world does. First, it repeats the allochronising logic that we recognise from Western discourses. Second, it
disappears as an imagined metaphysical possibility as an effect of its
excessive proliferation. Third, when the aporia at the heart of the harmony
concept is recognised, it allows for a re- politicisation of harmonious world
and Chinas role in world politics. I have argued that these findings make an important contribution to both
scholars of Chinese international politics and to theorists of time, space and multiplicity in IR. But where does this leave us- A key
effect of the onco-operative logic that I have identified in harmonious world
is undecidability. Harmony, as simulation, is paradoxically both totalising and
violent, and impossible (cf. Grace, 2003). To begin, its fetishised perfectability is constantly
undermined: [t]he perfect crime would be to build a world-machine without
defect, and to leave it without traces. But it never succeeds. We leave traces
everywhere viruses, lapses, germs, catastrophes signs of defect, or
imperfection (Baudrillard, 1997: 24). Moreover, contemplating the illusion of the real reveals
the object as neither the static, subordinated other of the subject, nor the
simulated project of an idealist order: the object that is neither one thing nor
the other is fundamentally illusory (Grace, 2003). In Baudrillards terms: [i]llusion is simply the
fact that nothing is itself, nothing means what it appears to mean. There is a
kind of inner absence of everything to itself. That is illusion. It is where we
can never get hold of things as they are, where we can never know the truth
about objects, or the other (Baudrillard in Baudrillard and Butler, 1997: 49). Undecidables, then, cannot be reduced to

opposition but reside within opposition, in Derridas words resisting and disorganising it, without4ever4constituting a third term and thus

Such undecidables exist neither

simply inside metaphysical discourse and its constitutive binaries, nor simply
outside them. They work, instead, on their margins and limits, disrupting and
displacing them, as we have seen rivercrabs do. This makes them
[n]either/nor, that is, simultaneously, either/or (Derrida, 1987 [1972]: 43, emphasis in original). We
without becoming dialectical (Derrida, 1987 [1972]: 43, emphasis in original).

can add to the previous discussion about the times and spaces of undecidable harmony, and the potential I have located in it for thinking

coeval multiplicities, through drawing on Derridas discussion of auto-immunity in relation to the term renvoyer, which means re-sending,
sending away, sending back (to the source) and/or sending on (Haddad, 2004: 37). Derrida explains that the autoimmune process: consists
always in a renvoi, a referral or deferral, a sending or putting off. The figure of the renvoi belongs to the schema of space and time, to what I
had thematized with such insistence long ago under the name spacing as the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space. The
values of the trace or of the renvoi, like those of diffrance, are inseparable from it (Derrida, 2005 [2003]-a: 35, emphasis in original).

Thus, in onco-operative harmony the (auto)immune topology in space

demands that harmony be sent off elsewhere, excluded, rejected. It must be
expelled under the pretext of protecting it, precisely by rejecting or sending
off to the outside the disharmonious elements inside it (cf. Derrida, 2005 [2003]-a: 35-6). As we
have seen, such exiling does not take place only in democracy , as Derrida implied, but also in
harmony. It is the expulsion of internal ills that has been promoted by Hus harmony and by both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
and biomedical approaches to cancer. It has been criticised by theorists of time and space such as Fabian, Inayatullah and Blaney, Massey and
Hutchings. Moreover, since the renvoi operates in time as well, autoimmunity also calls for putting4off [renvoyer] until later elections and the

So too does it postpone the coming of harmony.

Here, truly harmonious behaviour by the sovereign is postponed until later,
until more harmonious times. China needs to become strong first, be in
control of harmony on the inside first, use hard power first. This renvoi reinforces my claim
advent of democracy (Derrida, 2005 [2003]-a: 36).

that there is no essence to harmony, no self with which harmony can be self-same. To paraphrase Derrida, this double renvoi (sending off or

It is inscribed directly in
harmony, directly in or right onto the concept of a harmony without concept,
directly in a harmony devoid of self-sameness. It is a harmony of which the
concept remains free, out of gear, free-wheeling, in the free play of its
indetermination. It is inscribed directly in this thing or this cause that,
precisely under the name of harmony, is never properly what it is, never
itself. For what is lacking in harmony is proper meaning, the very meaning of
the selfsame, the it-self, the properly selfsame of the it-self. It defines harmony, and the very
to the other and putting off, adjournment) is an autoimmune fatality or necessity.

ideal of harmony, by this lack - 227 - of the proper and of the selfsame (cf. Derrida, 2003b: 61; 2005 [2003]-a: 36-7). Again, in a slightly

The onco-operative Chinese

system is not only a process by which harmony attacks a part of itself . This renvoi,
different sense, harmony has not taken place, is not taking place and will not take place.

moreover, consists in a deferral or referral to the other: as the undeniable, and I underscore undeniable, experience of the alterity of the other,
of heterogeneity, of the singular, the not-same, the different, the dissymmetric, the heteronomous (Derrida, 2005 [2003]-a: 38, emphasis in
original). By undeniable, here, Derrida also means that it is only deniable. The only way that it is possible to protect meaning is through a
sending-off (renvoi) by way of denial. Harmony is differantial in both senses of diffrance. It is diffrance,4renvoi, and spacing. This is why
spacing, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space is so important. (Derrida, 2005 [2003]-a: 38). Harmony, like democracy,
is what it is only in the diffrance by which it defers itself and differs from itself. Harmony can never achieve the indivisibility that it claims as
its prerequisite. To the extent that it tries to do so, it must enforce its law with violence (disharmony). In this sense, it is impossible. But, the
perceptive reader may ask, do the traces and cracks that make harmony come apart not also appear in the argument of this thesis- Could the
same not be said about the argument that harmony is impossible- Indeed. A successful failure. And the same is true for coeval multiplicities.
This thesis has questioned whether it is possible to imagine harmonious world in a way that allows for coeval multiplicities. The temptation set

However, the
undoing of harmonious world I have examined exposes the need to think
otherwise about the dichotomy of possibility/impossibility and to displace it.
Following Derrida, both harmonious world and coeval multiplicity are best conceived as both
possible and impossible, never simply one or the other. Any harmonious or
coeval relation to otherness is also always a disharmonious and - 228 allochronising relation. This deconstructive undecidability, as I have argued,
is not negative (as Massey would have it). That harmony or coeval multiplicities are not simply4possible is not an excuse to treat
up by this question is to answer in terms of the dichotomy it implies: it is either possible, or impossible.

them as simply4impossible. The aim of reading deconstruction or reversibility throughout this thesis has been to reveal the contradictions and

The purpose has been to show that the

post-political articulations of harmonious world do not hold up, and to bring
the political back into the harmony concept. COEVAL MULTIPLICITIES AND HARMONY TO COME I have
argued that harmonious world will not take place , I have argued against its possibility, I have used it against
itself, and written an entire thesis with the express strategy to make it disappear. Are scholars then to resolutely
reject harmony and harmonious world as viable concepts in IR- Are students
to retreat back to the comfortable concepts and language that have a more
established history in IR literatures- Although it may appear paradoxical, I want to answer
complexity that reside within what we try to enact and make possible.

these questions with a resolute no. Again: that harmony or coeval

multiplicities are not simply possible is not an excuse to treat them as simply
impossible. It calls, instead, for the opposite of abandoning harmony and
coeval multiplicities. The point that harmonious world is not uniquely
liberating, but repeats the politically problematic and allochronising logic of
more established writing in what is referred to as Western tradition, simply
means that it cannot escape the restraints and problems recognisable in
other terms. Therefore, retreating to other (old, comfortable) terms is not a
solution. There are, however, some good reasons to continue discussing
harmony and harmonious world as important concepts of IR. First, although
harmony has disappeared its proliferation has not . As explained above, I believe that harmonious
world will remain a key concept to Chinese politics for some time yet. This in itself means we should keep
engaging it. Second, I use it in acknowledgement of a tradition and aspiration to a way of doing things differently. Derridas
democracy to come is chosen in acknowledgement of his debt to a historical and intellectual heritage. As he claims in an interview
concerning autoimmunity: [o]f all the names grouped a bit too quickly under the category political regimes (and I do not believe that
democracy ultimately designates a political regime), the inherited concept of democracy is the only one that welcomes the possibility of
being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself (Derrida, 2003a: 121). I have shown that Derridas claim that
democracy would be the name of the only regime that presupposes its own perfectibility is highly questionable (Derrida, 2003a: 121).
There seems to be little impetus to call the processes and ideas that I have examined democracy (despite the CCP leaderships insistence
that China is democratic). Yet, they operate on the same (auto)immune or onco-operative logic that Derrida takes as giving democracy its
future, its to come. I have argued that harmony is onco-operative in a similar manner, and its legacy should be recognised. Third, I want to
retain the term harmony because of its universalist implications (cf. Pin-Fat, 2010: 119-20). Its universal claim that all conceivable elements

Despite
itself, it invites questions about what or who has been excluded, why and on
what grounds. I therefore take it as an invitation to question and challenge
the reality, precisely, of the divisions that deployments of harmony have
made visible to us. In the party-states version of harmony, Chinas future is
an active programme, but importantly this future is described through the
oxymoron of inevitable choice (State Council of the PRC, 2005b), legitimised as rational due
to the application of Chinas scientific outlook on development and
prescriptive of a future where China will always stand for fairness and
justice (Hu Jintao, 2007). I have questioned such prescriptive narratives, in order to open up to the undecidability of an unimaginable
future for harmonious world. The reason that I have kept insisting on such openness
(autoimmunity, undecidability, the Other, and so on) is because it makes the
political, and indeed any futures at all, imaginable (albeit in ways I shall qualify below). To Derrida
of a situation need to be in harmony for the situation to be harmonious conjures up the question of exclusions and exceptions.

[a] foreseen event is already present, already presentable; it has already arrived or happened and is thus neutralized in its irruption (Derrida,

[w]ithout the absolute singularity of the incalculable and

the exceptional, no thing and no one, nothing other and thus nothing, arrives
or happens (Derrida, 2005 [2003]-b: 148, emphasis in original). And again, [w]ithout autoimmunity, with
absolute immunity, nothing would ever happen or arrive; we would no longer
wait, await or expect, no longer expect one another, or expect any event
2005 [2003]-b: 143). Therefore,

(Derrida, 2005 [2003]-b: 152, see also 157). This is why Derrida insists on the future to come (avenir/4venir). In accordance with my
argument for (im)possible coeval multiplicities, this places focus on what comes, rather than that which begins from the self or the One.
Chinese language has the same connotations of the future as that which comes, where the character lai , meaning precisely to come, is
part of the term for future, weilai . This places it in a chain of meanings of the to come as future (weilai4 or jianglai4 ), return
(huilai4 ), and originally (yuanlai4 ). This echoes with the spectral temporality discussed in this thesis, where the future is to come as
a return of the other that is also its (non)origin. As we have seen weilai, the future, was itself harmonised in conjunction with Ai Weiweis

Through these ways of rethinking harmony, we

see how the undecidability at work in the very concepts of harmony and
coeval multiplicities leaves open the chance (or threat) of a future, for both
the terms themselves and for responsibility and singular decisions to be
taken beyond masterful sovereignty. This future is not just in the future,
something we can hope for, but it imposes itself with absolute urgency in the
form (or form-beyond-form) that the imperative of harmony takes here and
detention, making it deferred in more than one sense.

now. Because of its onco-operative (im)possible character, harmony is

structurally open to the other an other that does not await us as the unified
ideal of a programmable or predictable future, but that presses upon us (with
all the force of its self-difference) in the here-now (cf. Wortham, 2010: 131-2; Derrida, 1994). My
point of retaining the (im)possibility of a harmony to come is partly about
retaining the term harmony, but it is also about opening up to the
possibility of its continued destruction. By opening itself up to the other,
harmony threatens to further destroy itself, but also gives it the chance to
receive the other in the here-now, in coeval multiplicity. The point of the to
come is a future that cannot be identified in advance, since it would break
with all the old names. Without countries, civilizations, progress, we may ask
whether it would still make sense to speak of harmonious world under that
name, or indeed of coeval multiplicities in world politics. As a term, then,
harmony is not sacred, neither is coeval multiplicity . Some other context, some day, may
demand that we use a different word in other sentences (cf. Derrida, 2002: 181). Just as the PRC state (or indeed
any state) works on an onco-operative logic, so too does language attempt to
remain immune to anything that may threaten its logical syntax . This is a necessity for
language to make sense. The definition of a term, by definition, is a border and immune
protection from what it is not, but we can read its simultaneous autoimmunity through reading deconstruction. Therefore, at the same time as the
future is unpredictable, it is at work today, in onco-operative harmony and
coeval multiplicities: it is what is coming, what is happening. The
responsibility for what remains to be decided or done cannot consist in
following rules, rites or proper conduct of harmony, nor in a prescriptive
theory for how to think and write coeval multiplicities, but must remain within
the realm of the political.

Death
The notion of the irreversibility of death reduces our
existence to merely an object or machine, which either
functions or doesnt. This binary opposition between life
and death objectifies the body, which always takes
revenge on the subject by dyingand thus the quest for
life has killed us all. Only a symbolic exchange with death
can achieve a reversibility.
Baudrillard 93. Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist and cultural theorist,
former professor at European Graduate School, Symbolic Exchange and
Death: Theory, Culture & Society Baudrillard Jean. Sage Publications, Inc.
1993, pg. 158-160
The irreversibility of biological death, its objective and punctual character, is a modern fact
of science. It is specific to our culture. Every other culture says that death begins before
death, that life goes on after life, and that it is impossible to distinguish life
from death. Against the representation which sees in one the term of the other, we must try to see the
radical indeterminacy of life and death, and the impossibility of their autonomy in the symbolic
order. Death is not a due payment [chance], it is a nuance of life; or, life is a nuance of death. But our modern
idea of death is controlled by a very different system of representations: that of the
machine and the function. A machine either works or it does not. Thus the biological machine
is either dead or alive. The symbolic order is ignorant of this digital abstraction. And even biology
acknowledges that we start dying at birth, but this remains with the category of a functional definition. 25 It is quite
another thing to say that death articulates life, is exchanged with life and is the apogee of life: for then it becomes absurd
to make life a process which expires with death, and more absurd still to make death equivalent to a deficit and, an

Neither life nor death can any longer be assigned a given end:
there is therefore no punctuality nor any possible definition of death. We are living
accelerated repayment.

entirely within evolutionist thought, which states that we go from life to death: this is the illusion of the subject that

there is
no longer even a subject who dies at a given moment. It is more real to say
that whole parts of 'ourselves' (of our bodies, our language) fall from life to
death, while the living are subjected to the work of mourning. In this way, a few of the
sustains both biology and metaphysics (biology wishes to reverse metaphysics, but merely prolongs it). But

living manage to forget them gradually, as God managed to forget the drowned girl who was carried away by the stream
of water in Brecht's song: Und es geschah, dass Gott sie allmhlich vergass, zuerst das Gesicht, dann die Hnde, und
zuletzt das Haar . . . [It happened (very slowly) that it gently slid from God's thoughts: First her face, then her hands, and
right at the end her hair.] ['The Drowned Girl' in Bertolt Brecht: Poems and Songs, ed and tr. John Willett, London:
Methuen, 1990, p. 14]

The subject's identity is continually falling apart, falling into God's

forgetting. But this death is not at all biological. At one pole, biochemistry, asexual protozoa are not
affected by death, they divide and branch out (nor is the genetic code, for its part, ever affected by death: it is

At the other, symbolic, pole, death and

nothingness no longer exist, since in the symbolic, life and death are
reversible. Only in the infinitesimal space of the individual conscious subject
does death take on an irreversible meaning. Even here, death is not an event,
but a myth experienced as anticipation. The subject needs a myth of its end,
as of its origin, to form its identity. In reality, the subject is never there : like the
face, the hands and the hair, and even before no doubt, it is always already somewhere else,
trapped in a senseless distribution, an endless cycle impelled by death. This death, everywhere in
transmitted unchanged beyond individual fates).

In biological
death, death and the body neutralise instead of stimulating each other. The
mindbody duality is biology's fundamental presupposition. In a certain sense, this
duality is death itself, since it objectifies the body as residual, as a bad object
which takes its revenge by dying. It is according to the mind that the body becomes the brute,
life, must be conjured up and localised in a precise point of time and a precise place: the body.

objective fact, fated for sex, anguish and death. It is according to the mind, this imaginary schizz, that the body becomes

Therefore the mortal body is no more

'real' than the immortal soul: both result simultaneously from the same
abstraction, and with them the two great complementary metaphysics: the idealism of the soul (with
all its moral metamorphoses) and the 'materialist' idealism of the body, prolonged in biology.
Biology lives on as much by the separation of mind and body as from any other
Christian or Cartesian metaphysics , but it no longer declares this. The mind or soul is not
mentioned any more: as an ideal principle, it has entirely passed into the moral discipline of
science; into the legitimating principle of technical operations on the real and
on the world; into the principles of an 'objective' materialism . In the Middle Ages, those
the 'reality' that exists only in being condemned to death.

who practised the discourse of the mind or soul were closer to the 'bodily signs' (Octavio Paz, Conjunctions and
Disjunctions [tr. Helen Lane, New York: Arcade, 1990] ) than biological science, which, techniques and axioms, has passed

The Accident and the Catastrophe There is a

paradox of modern bourgeois rationality concerning death. To conceive of it
as natural, profane and irreversible constitutes the sign of the
'Enlightenment' and Reason, but enters into sharp contradiction with the
principles of bourgeois rationality, with its individual values, the unlimited
progress of science, and its mastery of nature in all things. Death, neutralised
as a 'natural fact', gradually becomes a scandal.
entirely over to the side of the 'non-body'.

Death occurs through seduction and indecipherable

complicity. In our fleeing from death by endlessly
resolving constructed threats, we inevitably run towards
it. As Baudrillards tale suggests, wherever we go, we will
always find Samarkand.
Baudrillard 03. Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist and cultural theorist,
former professor at European Graduate School, Death in Samarkand
Translated by Brian Singer 2003
http://insomnia.ac/essays/death_in_samarkand/
Consider
the story of the soldier who meets Death at a crossing in the marketplace , and
believes he saw him make a menacing gesture in his direction. He rushes to the king's palace and asks the
king for his best horse in order that he might flee during the night far from
Death, as far as Samarkand. Upon which the king summons Death to the palace and reproaches him for having
frightened one of his best servants. But Death, astonished, replies: "I didn't mean to frighten him. It
was just that I was surprised to see this soldier here, when we had a rendezvous tomorrow, in Samarkand." Yes, one runs towards one's fate all the more
surely by seeking to escape it. Yes, everyone seeks his own death, and the failed acts
An ellipsis of the sign, an eclipse of meaning: an illusion. The mortal distraction that a single sign can cause instantaneously.

are the most successful. Yes, signs follow an unconscious course. But all this concerns the truth of the rendez-vous in Samarkand; it does not
account for the seduction of the story, which is in no way an apologue of truth. What is astounding about the story is that

this

seemingly inevitable rendez-vous need not have taken place. There is nothing to suggest
that the soldier would have been in Samarkand without this chance encounter, and without the ill-luck of Death's naive gesture, which acted in
spite of itself as a gesture of seduction. Had Death been content to call the soldier back to order, the story would lose its charm. Everything

The gesture does not appear to be part of a strategy, nor even an unconscious ruse; yet
it takes on the unexpected depth of seduction, that is, it appears as something that moves laterally, as
a sign that, unbeknownst to the protagonists (including Death, as well as the soldier), advances a deadly
command, an aleatory sign behind which another conjunction, marvelous or disastrous, is being enacted. A conjunction that gives the
here is hinged on a single, involuntary sign.

sign's trajectory all the characteristics of a witticism. No one in the story has anything to reproach himself with - or else the king who lent his

Behind the apparent liberty of the two central characters

(Death was free to make his gesture, the soldier to flee), they were both
following a rule of which neither were aware. The rule of this game, which,
like every fundamental rule, must remain secret, is that death is not a brute
event, but only occurs through seduction, that is, by way of an instantaneous,
indecipherable complicity, by a sign or signs that will not be deciphered in
time. Death is a rendez-vous, not an objective destiny. Death cannot fail to go since he is
this rendez-vous, that is, the allusive conjunction of signs and rules which make
up the game. At the same time, Death is an innocent player in the game. This is what gives the story its secret irony, whose
horse, is as guilty as anyone else. No.

resolution appears as a stroke of wit [trait d'esprit], and provides us with such sublime pleasure - and distinguishes it from a moral fable or a
vulgar tale about the death instinct. The spiritual character [trait spirituel] of the story extends the spirited character [trait d'espritgestuel] of
Death's gesture, and the two seductions, that of Death and of the story, fuse together. Death's astonishment is delightful, an astonishment at
the frivolity of an arrangement where things proceed by chance: "But this soldier should have known that he was expected in Samarkand

Death shows only surprise, as if his existence

did not depend as much as the soldier's on the fact that they were to meet in
Samarkand. Death lets things happen, and it is his casualness that makes
him appealing - this is why the soldier hastens to join him. None of this involves the
unconscious, metaphysics or psychology. Or even strategy. Death has no plan. He restores chance with a
chance gesture; this is how he works, yet everything still gets done. There is
nothing that cannot not be done, yet everything still preserves the lightness
of chance, of a furtive gesture, an accidental encounter or an illegible sign.
That's how it is with seduction... Moreover, the soldier went to meet death
because he gave meaning to a meaningless gesture which did not even
concern him. He took personally something that was not addressed to him, as one might mistake for oneself a smile meant for
tomorrow, and taken his time to get there..." However

someone else. The height of seduction is to be without seduction. The man seduced is caught in spite of himself in a web of stray signs. And it

It is when signs are

seduced that they become seductive. Only signs without referents, empty,
senseless, absurd and elliptical signs, absorb us.
is because the sign has been turned from its meaning or "seduced", that the story itself is seductive.

yesK Neoliberalism

Link AIIB
The AIIB is an exportation of neoliberal policy
Bourne, Professor at Liaoning Institute of Science and Technology;
University of Melbourne Graduate, 11-27-15 (Thane, Australian Institute of
International Affairs)
The AIIBs role in promoting economic development in Asia is currently very much a case of speculation.
Without past histories of success (or failure) and a lack of available analysis of negotiations between bank
partners, the best that can be done is to extrapolate current political trends and make tentative
predictions. The deadlock over the World Bank and IMF voting reform has crystalized the need for greater

While existing institutions remain

deadlocked, China is seeking to build its international leadership credentials
by creating multilateral economic fora, suggesting a neoliberal
institutionalist policy approach from China towards the AIIB, at least in the
short-term. Arrayed against this, however, is the reality of Chinas growing
foreign economic interests, the growing contention between Chinese and
western conceptions of the states role in national economies, and the
broadening of competition for regional leadership in Asia. Although impossible to
representation for China in global economic institutions.

predict with certainty, development loan conditionality to protect Chinese interests in Asia remains a
plausible and likely long-term outcome for the AIIB.

Link China Threat

Security rhetoric constructs as Chinese economic growth
as dangerous to the liberal order
Whyte, MA IR, 13

(Alexander, Bristol University, E-International Relations, Interpreting the

Rise of China, http://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/13/interpreting-the-rise-of-china/)

The rise of the Peoples Republic of China has created significant debate for
21st Century international politics. Interpretations of Chinas rise greatly differ
and predictions of its economic, military and political future equally vary . On
the one hand, scholars view Chinas incredible economic growth as a remarkable
feat; the annual growth rate of national income averaging 9.7% percent
between the start of Deng Xiaopings market-orientated reform in 1978 and 2005
(Reddy, 2007, p.49). On the other hand, a handful of scholars view the rise of China
as a cause for anxiety and a recipe for conflict; this stems from the realist
presumption that a rising power inevitably uses the anarchic international
system and its growing economic power to expand its military might, creating a situation ripe for
conflict. In this dissertation I aim to outline and evaluate the various interpretations of a rising China.
Ultimately, I look to assess whether the rising China will challenge both US hegemony and the existing
liberal global order; the key word being challenge. In the first part of this dissertation I will emphasize the
competing theories concerning the emergence of China as a new power, primarily drawing on both the

no one theory has complete authority over this

debate; it is important to stress the complexity of this topic whilst securing a
definitive conclusion. I will outline two main positions regarding the
interpretations of Chinas rise; within these two positions I will be drawing particularly on
realist and liberal premise. I believe that

structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism and liberal internationalism. I believe that by debating not

through opening the

contest within each camp, it will be possible to gain more insight into the
complexity of Chinas rise. In the third chapter of this dissertation, I will turn to the empirical side
of this debate. Firstly, I will examine Chinas international engagement and their
Road to Peaceful Development. I attempt to draw on current international
issues: global warming, nuclear proliferation and the global financial crisis. All
of these individually have a significant impact across the globe . Moreover, I will
only between the two main theoretical camps of realism and liberalism, but

evaluate Chinas contribution to tackling these issues, assessing whether these efforts provide us with an
insight into China in the future.

A nations international image has become an

extremely influential and important aspect of international relations, and
subsequently, Chinas Road to Peaceful Development has received much
international political attention. Designed to ease fears of a rising China, I will look at
how the Road to Peaceful Development displays a certain sentiment towards
both Sino-US relations and the current international order . With Chinas rise, the
balance of power in the region is expected to change significantly. The dynamics of the East Asia region

the
traditional Hobbesian culture of the security dilemma creates a
suspicious atmosphere and a potentially conflictual outcome . In the
has led to considerable apprehension among both the US and Japan (Dent, 2008, p.121);

second part of the third chapter I will look closely at both the issue of Taiwan accompanied with Chinas
military build-up and the US-Japan alliance. I begin by looking at how Chinas military build-up creates

It is very easy to become

drawn in by the realist premise regarding a military-build, but to
pigeon-hole Chinas military-build is for the most part ignoring the
cause for concern, particularly surrounding the Taiwan Strait.

complexity of the situation. Similarly, I will examine the US-Japan alliance, focusing my
evaluation on both Chinas reaction and handling of the relationship since the mid 1990s. I will outline the
reasons for Chinas concern, but I will be sure to dedicate much effort into unraveling Chinas benign
regional ambitions regarding the trilateral relationship.

Offensive realism constructs a violent, Chinese rise as

inevitable it posits violent geopolitical strategies as the
only solution
Whyte, MA IR, 13

(Alexander, Bristol University, E-International Relations, Interpreting the

Rise of China, http://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/13/interpreting-the-rise-of-china/)

Offensive realism breaks away from defensive realism, dividing structural

realism into two. Although the two positions roughly start from the same set
of bedrock assumptions, they arrive at fundamentally divergent conclusions
about the nature of international politics. Where defensive realists such as Glaser and
Kaufman believe that the offence-defence balance can favour the defender, providing the defending state

Mearsheimers offensive realism supports a system in which states

seek security by intentionally decreasing the security of others (Glaser &
Kaufmann, 1998). As prominent offensive realist, John Mearsheimer, argues
that all great powers have some offensive military capability and no state can
know the future intentions of the other with certainty . Mearsheimer (2006) has
presented an explicit argument that the rise of China will not be peaceful. As Chinas
impressive economic growth continues over the next few decades,
the United States and China are likely to engage in deep security
competition with considerable potential for war (Mearsheimer, 2006, p.160).In a
with security,

debate with Brzezinksi, Mearsheimer (2005) suggested that the mightiest states attempt to establish

The
ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power
and eventually dominate the system. Mearsheimer (2005) understands the
United States to not tolerate peer competitors. The United States is
determined to remain the worlds only regional hegemon, and will seek to
contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer
capable of dominating Asia (Mearsheimer & Brzezinksi, 2005, pp.2-4). Mearsheimers
voice sends ripples throughout the scholarly and policy-making world of IR as
he sends the most worrisome message to the United States and any other status-quo
hegemony in their own region while making sure that no rival great power dominates another region.

power. Kirshner (2010) argues that Mearsheimers offensive realist perspective is wrong and dangerous.
Mearsheimer argues that if states want to survive, they should always act like good offensive realists
(Mearsheimer, 2011, p.11-12). Moreover, according to Mearsheimer, the ideal situation is to be there

Kirshner (2010) argues

that a major flaw in Mearsheimers argument is his failure to distinguish
between being a hegemon and bidding for hegemony. A central theme of
Mearsheimers theory is a states survival; this position seems to insinuate
that to ensure its survival China must bid for regional hegemony. Kirshner
explains that bidding for hegemony is one of the few and rare paths to
destruction for a great power. Moreover, most great powers are extremely likely to survive; most
great powers that bid for hegemony do not survive (Kirshner, 2010, p.61).
Confrontation with China as suggested by offensive realism would be a selfmutilating geopolitical gesture that would damage the US and undermine its
international political influence. Instead classical realists would base their policies on how to
hegemon in the system (Mearsheimer, 2011, cited in Kirshner, 2010, p.61).

best shape Chinas domestic political debates and international opportunities so as to encourage and
accommodate its peaceful rise to great power status (Kirshner, 2010, p.71).

Policymakers have traditionally constructed China is a

violent region primed for rivalry this led to countless
hot and cold wars
Liff & Ikenberry, Professors of IR, 14

(Adam & John; 2014; Assistant Professor of

East Asian International Relations at Indiana Universitys School of Global and International Studies, a
postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and Associate-in-Research at
Harvard Universitys Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies &
Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of
Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; MITPress Journals, Racing
toward Tragedy? http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00176)

post Cold War period, scholars and policymakers have widely

considered the Asia Pacific ripe for rivalry and at risk of intensifying military
competition.1 Developments over the past decade have deepened these
expectations. A changing distribution of material capabilities owing primarily
to Chinas rise, coupled with regionwide economic growth, surging military spending, and military
modernization, seems to have created an even more volatile climate and a
potentially vicious cycle of arming and rearming . Together, the pace and scale of change
create uncertainty about the future, which in turn exacerbates extant insecurities. In a reflection of
these regional trends, many observers suggest that an arms race is under way in the Asia Pacific,
and some point to the security dilemma as driving this competition . But is this
the case? What are the forces driving the intensification of military
competition in the region? In the past, several cases of rising powers, rivalries
between major powers, and arms races fomented hot or cold wars that
were financially costly and devastating for international peace , stability, and the
global economy.2 Were either type of conflict to occur in the Asia Pacific
today, its effects could be disastrous for the region and impose catastrophic costs on the
global economy and international order. Yet Chinas growing power and regional
relationships, marked by widespread uncertainties and insecurities about the
future, appear to be important facts of life in the contemporary Asia Pacific. Political
frictions and mistrust among major actors in this unfolding drama are
exacerbating the effects of objectively measurable and rapid material shifts .
To make matters worse, long-standing disputes over maritime boundaries and
territorial claims, not to mention history, fester. For evidence of the disturbing trend line, in
2012 aggregate military spending in Asia surpassed that of Europe for the first
time in modern history.3
Throughout the

Chinas rise is intrinsically tied to the security dilemma

Liff & Ikenberry, Professors of IR, 14

(Adam & John; 2014; Assistant Professor of

East Asian International Relations at Indiana Universitys School of Global and International Studies, a
postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and Associate-in-Research at
Harvard Universitys Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies &
Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of
Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; MITPress Journals, Racing
toward Tragedy? http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00176)

Asia Pacific is a region in geopolitical transition. For decades, regional stability has been
maintained primarily through a U.S.-led alliance system . Since the turn
The

of the millennium, however, the shifting political and economic terrain has led
many observers to expect an upsurge in military competition , arms races, and
the possibility of a catastrophic military conflict. The rapid transformation of
the region is not exclusively a story about China. Indeed, the economies and
militaries of the countries in Southeast Asia , as well as Chinas large
neighbors India and Russia, have also experienced rapid growth. Meanwhile, U.S.
allies South Korea and Australia are significantly strengthening their militaries and becoming increasingly

Japan remains the worlds third-largest

economy, has considerable wealth and military capabilities, and has begun to gradually
increase its defense spending. More generally, Japans traditionally low-key
security profile appears to be undergoing changes of potentially immense
long-term significance. Yet the rapid rise of China, the resulting shift in the
distribution of regional material capabilities, and uncertainty about Chinas
future trajectory are arguably the main forces driving concerns about possible
arms races, now or in the future. In 2010 China became the worlds secondlargest economy. Its official defense spending has nearly quintupled in
nominal renminbi terms since 2002 and now ranks second only to that of the
(globally distributed) U.S. military. Chinas defense spending remains largely constant
as a percentage of its (rapidly growing) gross domestic product, though that long-term trend has
reversed itself for the last several years, including a twice-as-fast projected increase in 2014. 5
Widespread concerns about the objective reality of Chinas rapidly increasing
military capabilities are exacerbated by its low military transparency , which
active players in regional security. For its part,

deepens general uncertainty and specific worries about its capabilities and intentions.

Purely domestic explanations for Chinas behavior are

inadequate analyzing it in the broader context of global
capital is key
McNally, Hudson Professor, 12

(Christopher; 2012; ASDO, Hudson Valley College,

Sino-Capitalism Chinas Reemergence and the International Political Economy,
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/filemanager/ASDP/ASDP_Workshops/WabashDepauw2012/
2012_ASDO_Sino-Capitalism_WP_April_18.pdf)

approaches using purely domestic causes to explain international

effects second image15 tend to be insufficient to explain a countrys
policy preferences. Nonetheless, attempts to analytically integrate two-levels
Chinas institutional arrangements and interest alignments in the domestic
political economy with Chinas emergent global role can open up new
perspectives.16 While China might have been a minor player in the
international political economy up until ten years ago , the characteristics of
its domestic political economy now matter more than ever . After all, it is the
emergence of capitalist development within China that has unleashed the
productive forces driving Chinas growing influence in international trade ,
finance, diplomacy and military affairs. Understanding developments in Chinas internal
political economy should thus form an integral part of studying Chinas
international ascent.
Naturally,

Link Engagement
The affs scapegoating of China for global economic
instability is a tool to shift the blame Neoliberalism
Wolff 15 (Richard, 22 December 2015, Capitalism - Not China - Is to Blame
for the Current Global Economic Decline,
http://www.rdwolff.com/content/capitalism-not-china-blame-current-globaleconomic-decline)
China too is both victor and victim in capitalism's contradiction a nd its temporary
postponement from the 1970s to 2008. On the one hand, the stagnation of wages coupled
with the expansion of consumer (and government) credit in North America,
Western Europe and Japan provided soaring demands there for relatively
cheap consumer goods exports from China. Having bet its industrialization strategy on
those export markets, China achieved economic superpower status by selling into
capitalism's contradiction and its postponement via credit. Likewise merchants such as
Walmart achieved parallel status by being the retail outlets for Chinese
products. Financial enterprises in capitalism's old centers perhaps benefited the most as they
developed extremely profitable ways to securitize the consumer debt, sell it and insure it (credit default
swaps etc.).

Financial enterprises benefited doubly as they also managed (via

wealth redistributed and concentrated upward by stagnant
real wages and the postponement of capitalism's contradiction via credit. But now China is
becoming a victim of the classic capitalist contradiction. China's exports flag
because consumer demand in capitalism's old centers is falling. Wage
stagnation in those centers can no longer be offset by credit expansion. Nor
can it be offset by rising demand among what are still the far lower-waged
workers in capitalism's new centers (China's included). In simplest terms, capitalism's posthedge funds etc.) the extreme

1970s global development substituted lower- for higher-waged workers while it redistributed almost all the

The eventual effect

of capitalism's contradiction (notwithstanding its temporary postponement via credit) was
predictable. Chinese production would slow down and thus cut its demands for raw materials, energy
wealth created since the 1970s to a top 1 to 3 percent of the world's wealthy.

and many other basic production inputs. Falling sales of those inputs are now decimating the many
national and regional economies that became dependent upon selling those inputs to the Chinese and

global economic decline persists - notwithstanding

the endlessly hyped "recoveries." The cause of global economic decline is not
China (or any other particular part of a more-globalized-than-ever world economy), but rather the
capitalist contradiction that could no longer be postponed by credit extension. That so many
other new capitalist centers. Thus

contemporary economic pundits and others blame China reflects a combination of very superficial
economics and old-fashioned China bashing.

Engagement fails the more it empowers China the more

they resist liberal order
Whyte, MA IR, 13

(Alexander, Bristol University, E-International Relations, Interpreting the

Rise of China, http://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/13/interpreting-the-rise-of-china/)

American leaders have suggested offering China a stake in the existing

system within which China benefits. China is thus encouraged to be a status
quo power within a US-led regional and global order. The problem with this
approach is that as time passes China will be less accommodating and

more defiant as time passes. Accepting this premise relies on China accepting
the liberal line of thinking, and moreover, that Chinese interests and
ambitions are elastic which can be moulded according to the circumstances
of Chinas rise; the flaws in the relationship model constructed by Washington are more increasingly
apparent (Lee, 2010). For Neo-realists smaller is better [and] two is best of all. Waltz (1979) argues
that there is greater prospect for peace if power is shared between a smaller number of states (Waltz,

Friedberg (1994) argues that whether or not they are correct about
the comparative virtues of bipolarity, the neo-realists are probably right that,
all other things being equal, multipolar systems are intrinsically unstab le
(Friedberg, 2994, p.9). The East Asia region remains precarious . Furthermore, the growth of
1979, p. 161).

Chinese soft power coincides with the decline of American soft power. Kurlantzick (2006) argues that

Americas declining attractiveness is both particular and widespread . The United

States is slowly but surely losing its ability to persuade and influence other countries through its values, its
culture, and its institutions. Meanwhile, as

Chinas economy continues to grow,

Beijing begins to enunciate its values and market its institutions and
culture, projecting Chinese influence further with more clout and
authority (Kurlantzick, 2006). Breslin (2010) suggests that in many respects, the
interest in the rise of Chinas soft power should be seen alongside the
concomitant concern about the loss of US soft power in particular, and
challenges to US hegemony in general (Breslin, 2010, p.828). Furthermore, Follath (2010)
goes on to argue that China is able to challenge US hegemony through
successfully pursuing an aggressive trade policy toward the West,
applying diplomatic pressure to their partners, pursuing a campaign
bordering on cultural imperialism to oppose human rights we
perceive to be universal; China is spreading its wings and imposing itself
through the use of soft power instead of hard power (Follath, 2010).

Chinas investments into Western industry are attempts

to integrate itself in the neoliberal international order
Clark & Monk 11 (Gordon & Ashby, 7/11, Sage Journals, Competition and
Change Vol. 15 No. 2, The Political Economy of USChina Trade and
Investment: The Role of the China Investment Corporation)
the newly established
China Investment Corporation (CIC) took a $5 billion stake in Morgan Stanley.
Like many other US institutions, Morgan Stanley was vulnerable to the
discounting of its subprime mortgage investments and experienced rapidly
eroding confidence in its capacity to withstand the rigours of market volatility .
As the global financial crisis accelerated through the second half of 2007,

In exchange for the CICs investment, Morgan Stanley gave up nearly 10 per cent of its common stock.

the
Chinese government announced, in effect, that its sovereign wealth would be
used to claim a share of the global financial industry. While the CIC attempted
to justify its behaviour on commercial and financial grounds, it has become
clear that the investments were made for their strategic value. By strategic we
mean that the success of the funds investments was (and is) determined not
only from the perspective of shareholder value but also national stakeholder
value. Indeed, as one of the worlds largest sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), the CIC has
eschewed conventional portfolio investment in developed financial markets
With other, similarly high profile, investments in financial institutions Blackrock and JC Flowers,

for strategic investment in industries and jurisdictions deemed essential to

Chinas long-term growth. The CIC is one element in the Chinese
governments strategy for maximizing the countrys rate of economic growth.
The American response to these investments was muted when compared to the hostility shown to
proposed investments by Middle Eastern SWFs in US infrastructure a couple of years prior to the financial
meltdown.1 In some quarters,

it was hoped that the CIC and other large SWFs might
underwrite global financial stability, using their resources to take long-term
positions in the core institutions of the global economy. It was also hoped that
these investments and government-led initiatives to stabilize financial
markets might forestall a deeper crisis, one that threatened to fracture the
global hegemony of the Anglo-American system of financial intermediation
and market exchange. These hopes were not realized, as it would be another 24 months before
markets rallied and there was some semblance of confidence in the US economy and the global banking
industry.

Chinese globalization and transition to an open neoliberal

economy is now economic engagement just exacerbates
neoliberalism in China and globally
Pieterse Professor of global studies at University of California, 15 [Jan
Nederveen, Chinas contingencies and globalization, Third World Quarterly,
Page 1996-1997] KLu
As a driving force in the twenty-first-century world economy,

China has made

headlines in several

rapid growth has played an increasing role in Asia and worldwide; Chinas
demand for commodities has boosted exports from developing economies; its
capacities. Its

industrial exports have crowded out other industrial exporters. Holding the worlds largest current account

As a large-scale buyer of US Treasuries, it

enabled ballooning debt in the USA (which came to a head in 200708). Investments in and
loans to developing countries in Latin America and Africa have supplemented
or competed with international development institutions. Regional institutions
such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have exercised influence, and
so forth. In the wake of the 2008 crisis Chinas role on the world stage has grown to
the point that it is recognised as forging a new phase of globalisation in
which it helps mould the relationships and rules at the core of the
international economy, 49 or as staging a new globalisation with Chinese characteristics. 50
surplus, over $3 trillion, weighs in as well.

China moved up in international reporting with headlines such as China assumes lead on world economy.

As
China is recognised as a force in the world economy, so is the countrys
rebalancing. Chinas premiers contribute opinion articles to the Financial Times. Wen Jiabao discussed
51 In 2011 the Financial Times ran a series of articles under the heading China shapes the world.

China shifting the development model and Li Keqiang discussed Chinas great expectations for ties with
an indebted Europe. 52 Yet China is also a fragile superpower, 53 and another headline refers to it as
Hesitating to take on global leadership. 54 According to Dani Rodrik, the WTO Agreement on Subsidies
(which penalises industrial subsidies) left China no choice but to use monetary policy instruments,
including undervaluing the yuan and financial repression. To make room for China in the world economy,
he advocates revision of the Agreement on Subsidies.55 In 2015 the combination of a strong dollar and
weak euro and yen, with slow growth in top economies and stuttering emerging markets, is giving rise to
IMF warnings of economic stagnation and growing debt. Thus China is also part of a wider tension between
WTO rules (liberalising trade) and IMF concerns (economic and financial stability). Min Gong has criticised
the accusation of China undervaluing the yuan on wider grounds.56 Chinas leading role in the world
economy involves several strands. Its domestic rebalancing and its international role come together in the
familiar combo of intermestic (internationaldomestic) politics. Over time any scenario of Chinas
rebalancing will involve slower growth, which will largely be a positive development for the country, with

diverse ramifications for Asia and developing countries across the world. Just as Chinas growth and
commodities demand has spurred growth in developing countries and emerging economies, Chinas
slowdown affects commodities exporters (from Australia, Brazil and Chile to Peru and Zambia). Since
urbanisation and infrastructure development in China and Asia will be ongoing, demand for commodities

As Chinese industries move up the

productivity and technology ladder, this leaves room for low-value industrial
production to move to lower wage countries. Yet, with growing competition in emerging
will be long-term, though at a lower level than previously.

economies, manufacturing profit margins have slimmed and this growth path has become more difficult.
Chinas demand for higher quality parts and components will affect different developing countries and
sectors differently. China is catching up in research and development, innovation and smart production
(Xaomi is an example), but Chinese brands lag behind in international recognition and appeal.57 Chinese
imports of consumer goods will remain limited as long as household incomes remain repressed and the
RMB is undervalued.58 Chinas shares market may be about to become part of global emerging market
indices: Chinas $6tn onshore A-shares market is just two to three years away from being included in the
major emerging market indicesChinas inclusion in global benchmarks would probably herald a huge
inflow of capital, as most institutional investors currently have little exposure to the worlds largest

China has become increasingly active in international and

regional institutions. From being globalised China has increasingly become an
active globalising force and the logics of hybridisation have been changing
fundamentally.60 The BRICS New Development Bank and CRA, the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (all established in 2014), major Silk Road projects
and trade and investment initiatives in Asia indicate that the co-evolution of
China and globalisation is reaching a new level. Yet uncertainty prevails. According to
emerging market. 59

Martin Wolf (who doesnt usually issue calls to prayer), for China to navigate the new normal will require
very deft macroeconomic managementThe

world must pray the Chinese authorities

manage this transition successfully. 61

Global neoliberalism is designed and upheld to reinforce

US interests these Western values necessarily exclude
Eastern culture
Whyte, MA IR, 13

(Alexander, Bristol University, E-International Relations, Interpreting the

Rise of China, http://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/13/interpreting-the-rise-of-china/)

The present international system is designed primarily to represent and

promote American interests. Where some believe that the current international
system is far more resilient and adaptable than previous systems and
therefore likely to be reformed from within rather than replaced, others have
opposing views. Martin Jacques (2009) predicts a twin-track process. First, China and other
rising powers force the dominant powers make reluctant and inadequate
reform to existing Western-centric institutions. The second development, a long term
vision, is the creation of new institutions sponsored and supported by China but also embracing other

China is likely to operate

both within and outside the current international order system, seeking to
rising countries such as India and Brazil. Jacques (2009) argues that

transform the system at the same time. China will exist along the system and is likely to usurp it, whilst

the United States will

bitterly resist the decline of an international system from which it benefits so
sponsoring a new China-centric international system. Moreover,

much: as a consequence, any transition will inevitably be tense and conflictual (Jacques, 2009, pp.358362). Today many Chinese scholars see Chinas hierarchical world as the solution to the world ills. Chinese

many feel that it is the duty of patriotic Chinese to

spread Chinese values, language, and culture not just in Asia, but around the
world; what Nyiri (2006) has described as the yellow mans burden (Nyiri,
2006, p.106). Rasmussen (2004) argues that a rising China will find it difficult to
culture is taken to be superior, and

find their place in the sun with the spread of Western values
through globalisation. China will not reject the technologies, organisation
techniques, or even democracy, but they will reject the cosmopolitan
institutions which the West insists follow from globalisation. Consequently, China will present
visions of world order and peace that rival the Western vision (Rasmussen, 2004,
p.179). Economy (2010) states never mind notions of a responsible stakeholder; China has become
a revolutionary power. Economy argues that China no longer wants to be a passive recipient of
information from out the world, rather, China has launched a grand strategy designed to remake global
norms and institutions; changing the rules of the game (Economy, 2010).

Link State
State action has become warped into a tool of labor
Altun, European Research Center, 15

(Sirma; Eberhard Karls University,

European Research Center, Debating the Neoliberal Transformation in Peoples Republic of China:
Washington Consensus and Beyond, http://www.ercct.uni-tuebingen.de/Files/ERCCT%20Online%20Paper
%20Series/Young%20Scholar%20Workshop%202013/EOPS29,%20Sirma%20Altun,%20Debating%20the
%20Neoliberal%20Transformation%20in%20People%E2%80%99s%20Republic%20of%20China
%20Washington%20Consensus%20and%20Beyond.pdf)

Post-Washington Consensus renders a shift in terms of the

definition of state as an impediment to the reformed state as the facilitator
of the development process (Yalman, 2009). Despite the shift in the role of
state, what Washington Consensus and PostWashington Consensus have in
common is their persistent commitment for the transformation of the
relations between the state and labour. Following David Harveys (2005) conceptualization,
this article asserts that the neoliberal transformation of the relations between
the state and labour has mainly two dimensions . First, the neoliberal attack
against labour takes the form of repressive measures against trade unions
and the dismantling of working class organizations . At the same time, the
consolidation of flexible labour markets has been complemented with the
states withdrawal from the provision of social welfare and social security for
workers (Harvey, 2005:168). Because of the cutbacks in subsidies, benefits and nonmarket protections for workers, reduction in real wages, structural unemployment, rising
informalization and faster turnover has become widespread (Saad-Filho, 2010).
Meanwhile, the privatization of welfare provisions such as housing , education,
health care and retirement benefits has a significant role in the compression
of real wages. Nonetheless, states assume an active role in disciplining labour through limiting the
As mentioned above,

right to collective action through trade unions and shop floor organizations especially in developing

the transnationalization of production supported by the

financialisation and increasing mobility of capital has served to the
composition of a global labour force whose own 13 geographical mobility is
constrained (Harvey, 2005:168). Thus, illegal internal and international migration has
deprived migrant workers from the rights and benefits that belongs to
citizens (Ong, 2006) while turning them into a huge and highly exploitable
reserve army of labour (Harvey, 2005) 12 . In other words, local working classes have
become highly subordinated to the rules of international economy . The
countries. Second,

combination of export-led industrialization model with the transnationalization of production has facilitated

2009). To give
one example, between 1980 and 2005, the number of manufacturing workers
increased four times worldwide while in East Asia the increase in the number
of workers was about nine-fold from 100 million to 900 million workers (McNally,
2009:51). In fact, by 2002, the total number of manufacturing workers in G-7
countries was about one-half of the number of Chinese manufacturing
workers (McNally, 2009:52). Beyond these mind blowing numbers lies the picture
of international division of labour and the new geography of production .
However, the relocation of production is not only limited with the East Asian
countries. As Washington and Post-Washington Consensus prescribe export-led industrialization to
developing countries as the only way of integration with the world economy, the workers in
significant changes in the structure of world manufacturing since the 1980s (McNally,

various regions of the world such as Eastern Europe , sub-Saharan Africa and
Latin America has joined the ranks of international competition between
national working classes (Saad-Filho, 2010). The fact that rising numbers of
workers take part within the transnational production processes makes a
downward pressure on wages while leading to an increase in the rate of
surplus value (McNally, 2009). In addition, what flexible working conditions means for
the increasing numbers of workers is longer work hours , piecework production
and and lack of job security. In short, neoliberalism facilitated the
transformation of the relations between the state and labour in favour of
capital since the state assumes an active role in reestablishment of the power
of capital against labour. Hence, what Washington Consensus and Post-Washington Consensus
have in common is their persistence with the neoliberal attack against labour.

Multilateralism
Neoliberalism manifests itself in multilateral institutions
Araghi 10 (Farshad, January 23-29, 2010, Economic and Political Weekly,
Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 39-41,The End of 'Cheap Ecology' and the Crisis of 'Long
Keynesianism')
It is precisely the crisis of negative Keynesianism that is at the heart of the
current crisis, and which is leaving the global institutions of negative
Keynesianism (the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the IMF and the World
Bank) with no solution other then transferring the costs of the crisis to the
South (and to the South within the North). By adopting this logic, the UN climate summit in
Copenhagen followed exactly in the footsteps of the institutions of negative
Keynesianism. In doing so, it also adopted the WTO's recent past as its own
future. In fact, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations
Framework for Climate Change made the explicit comparison between the
WTO and the future of the climate talks: "The worst case scenario for me is
that climate becomes a second World Trade Organisation", he said in an interview
last year (quoted in Monbiot 2009). His worst case scenario came through in
Copenhagen. More directly, the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks is
indicative of the depth of the crisis of "long Keynesianism" that has
exhausted its positive and negative ways of dealing with the
"unsustainability" of global capitalism. The fantastic desire for a pendulum shift, in the form
of a return to positive Keynesianism, fails to see that post-war Keynesianism was (1) an
externalising regime fundamentally standing on the shoulder of the "cheap oil
regime" of 1953-73, and (2) that the mass consumption component of high
wage Keynesianism in the North was always standing on the shoulder of
"forced underconsumption" in the South (Araghi 2003; cf Patnaik 2008). Precisely for these
reasons, green and global Keynesianism is a contradiction in terms.

yesK Linguistic Imperialism

Link --- Diplomatic Engagement

The language of diplomacy and international institutions has
transitioned --- the affs execution of the plan through diplomatic
means perpetuates the dominance of English and the destruction of
the non-natives to noises and results in linguicism and linguicide
Tsuda 10 --- Professor in the Doctoral Program in Modern Cultures and Public Policies of the
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan,
Graduate School of International Development @ Nagoya University (Speaking Against the
Hegemony of English, Yukio Tsuda, Against the Hegemony of English pp 248-268,
2010)//chiragjain

The Hegemony of English refers to the situation

where English is so dominant that inequality and discrimination take place in
communication. As far as I have studied, there are at least 6 problems of inequality
and discrimination caused by the Hegemony of English. They are: (1) Linguicism;
(2) Linguicide; (3) Americanization of Culture; (4) Information Control; (5)
Mind Control; (6) English Divide. I shall discuss them one by one. Linguicism What is
Six Problems of the Hegemony of English

linguicism? The word has been coined by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, a Finnish linguist, following racism and

Linguicism is defined as follows: Linguicism refers to ideologies and

structures where language is the means for effecting or maintaining an
unequal allocation of power and resources (Phillipson, 1992, p. 55). Looking back in
history, we discover a great number of cases of linguicism. Speakers of dialects
were discriminated against because of the linguistic variety they spoke. In the
process of building a modern state, the government established a standard language which
served as a linguistic norm and became a basis of discriminating against the
speakers of the nonstandard languages . English functions and is widely recognized as a
global standard language today. That very fact serves as an enormous power and
becomes as a basis of discrimination, because it gives the speakers of English
an enormous power and control in communication . The very fact that the use of English
is taken for granted also gives an additional power to the English-speaking
countries and people. In most international conferences English is used as the
only or one of the official languages. For example, the International Whaling
Committee adopts English as its only official language. The non-English-speaking
sexism.

countries have to provide translations if they wish to use their own languages. In 1993 when the
International Whaling Committee was held in Kyoto, Japan, I had a chance to observe one of the meetings.

when
the delegates for these three countries spoke in their languages, the audience
did not even pay attention to the speakers. Some people chatted among
themselves. They started listening only when the translators provided the
English translations. This example shows that the Hegemony of English not only
deprives the languages other than English of the chance to be used, but also
marginalize them as meaningless noises . In other words, the non-Englishspeaking people are not only deprived of their language rights, but their
human dignity is also violated as they are ignored. The Hegemony of English forces
the non-English-speaking people to learn and use English. However, the English
spoken by the non-English-speaking people is often labeled Broken English ,
which is rather an unkind label to degrade the non-English-speakers . In addition, a new
Most delegates spoke in English except for France, China, and Japan. I was surprised to find that

label has been created and used recently. The new label is BSE (Ammon, 2003). BSE stands for Bad, Simple

the
nonstandard English becomes the target of discrimination . In international
scientific journals, linguicism seems to be prevalent as scholars of the nonEnglish-speaking countries have difficulty getting their papers accepted not
necessarily because of the quality of their researches per se, but because of the
quality of their English. In todays international academic community, the system is
already organized in such a way that benefits the scholars who are native
speakers of English, because English is now the language of sciences , and the
ideas and voices of the non-English-speaking scholars are often ignored
unless they are very proficient in English. Donald Macedo, a critical sociolinguist at the
English. The label ridicules and degrades the English spoken by nonnative speakers of English. Thus,

University of Massachusetts, and his associates present a very interesting case of linguicism, which
happened some years ago at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They describe it as

A group of students petitioned the administration not to hire professors

who spoke English with a foreign accent, under the pretext that they had difficulty
understanding their lectures. By barring professors who spoke English with a foreign
accent, these students would have kept Albert Einstein from teaching in U.S.
universities (Macedo, Dendrinos and Gounari, 2003, p. 12) Thus, linguicism, or inequality and
discrimination because of the dominance of English is real . Non-English-speaking
people are not only forced to learn and use English, but they are also discriminated against
because of the variety of English they use. Linguicide There is a prediction among some
linguists that in several hundred years from today, only one prestigious global
language will prevail in the world. It will be English. Linguicide refers to the
killing of languages, especially weaker and smaller ones. The term linguicide derives the word,
follows:

genocide (the deliberate killing of a people because of their difference). Daniel Nettle and Susanne
Romaine, British linguists, have provided a detailed account of linguicide in their book Vanishing Voices

They attribute linguicide to the global spread of Western

modernization which has destroyed the social environments of non-Western countries since the
sixteenth century. Western modernization has transformed traditional societies
into the so-called modern societies across the world that encourage the use
of Western languages and degrade the indigenous languages. The creation of the
(Nettle and Romaine, 2000).

modern societies has led to the establishment of societies that are centered on Western languages and
indigenous languages have been marginalized. Nettle and Romaine (2000) report that there around 5000

The number of languages has decreased by 50%

over the past five centuries, and the speed at which languages disappear is increasing, with, on
6700 languages in the world today.

average, one language disappearing every two weeks. There have been a lot of voices raised and warnings
given to the crisis of ecology, especially, in reference to the problems of endangered species, or the
disappearance of animals and plants. Linguistic ecology is in crisis too. This planet is filled with
endangered languages which may disappear at any moment. Along with the disappearance of these
languages, related cultures, values, knowledge, philosophy, poetry, songs, memories, and linguistic souls
also disappear. In a few hundred years from today, there will be only one language left on earth English.
Living in the United States, many people often feel threatened by the rise of Spanish. It has brought about
a linguistic movement called the Official English Movement in the 1980s, trying to officially adopt English
as the national language of the United States. English is not an officially national language by law in the
United States. However, this movement underestimates the enormous power and influence of English,
especially in the international and global context. Many people of the world feel threatened by English, as
it dominates as the global language for business, science, media, tourism, politics, diplomacy, education,
and so on. In France and Brazil, the governments have passed a law that restricts the use of English in

The
majority of international organizations adopt English as a sole or official
language. As the global economy spreads in the world, there will be no choice
for most people of the world but to learn and use English . It is true that English is
their countries. English dominates all the spheres of human life in many countries in the world.

a lingua franca today, but because of that it threatens other languages . It

deprives us of the opportunity to use other languages. I suspect that the
Hegemony of English is one of many factors causing global language shift. Language
shift is a phenomenon in which a person changes his/her primary language. This happens to most
immigrants. They gain a language of the host country, and they tend to lose their own in order to survive.
So language shift is accompanied by language loss. Economically and politically strong languages often
replace the weaker languages. Some people argue that English Hegemony is not responsible for global
linguicide by pointing out that it is the dominant languages in each country that cause the weaker
languages to disappear. This is partially true. But, we are living in the age of globalization in which we are
greatly influenced not by the forces in each country, but the global forces that come across the national

English which
dominates as the global standard language . For example, the dominant languages
such as French, Spanish, and Arabic have been losing power in international
communication in the face of the Hegemony of English . The percentage of
speeches made in the United Nations in English during 19921999 increased from
45% to 50%, while the percentages of speeches made in French, Spanish, and
Arabic all decreased: 19% to 13.8% for French, 12% to 10% for Spanish, and 10% to 9.5% for
borders. It is very difficult for any language to escape the enormous influence of

Arabic (Calvet, 1998). Even the very strong languages are under the influence of Hegemony of English.
English, being the language of globalization and the greatest economic and political power, makes people
gravitate and shift to it and lose their own languages. Louis-Jean Calvet, a French linguist, names English a
hypercentral language that makes many people around the world gravitate toward it. Calvet provides
what he calls the gravitation model of linguistic hierarchy in which most people gravitate toward English,
the hypercentral language, causing many people to shift to English (Calvet, 1998). Indeed, many people all
around the world are now living in a social environment that centers on English. In China, more than 500

In Korea, unless you have good scores in the

English test, you cannot have a job interview . In Japan, billions of money is spent every
million people are learning English.

year on the learning of English. The teaching of English for small children is becoming a big industry. It is

Not only in Asia, but

throughout the world, the Englishmania or obsession with English is taking place . Why? It
possible that in these countries many people will shift to English in the future.

is because the whole world has been organized in such a way that leaves no other choices but to choose
English. Many people believe they have chosen English on their own free will, but actually they are made
to choose English and are not allowed to choose other languages. We are now living in an age of Speak
English, or Perish. This may result, sooner or later, in a global language shift in which people throw away
their own languages and shift to English. This would lead to global language loss and that is global
linguicide.

Link --- Economic Engagement

Economic expansion in China perpetuates the dominance
over the Periphery through linguistic dominance
Tsuda 8 --- Professor in the Doctoral Program in Modern Cultures and Public Policies of the
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan,
Graduate School of International Development @ Nagoya University (The Hegemony of
English and Strategies for Linguistic Pluralism: Proposing the Ecology of Language Paradigm,
Yukio Tsuda, 2008)//chiragjain
2. Dominance of English as Globalism While the dominance of English as neocolonialism occurs at the level of international interpersonal

the dominance of English as globalism operates at the level of

international mass communication which involves the issues such as cultural
and media imperialism, Americanization of global culture, McDonaldization
and Dallasization of the society, the unequal flow of international news and
information, the dominance of English in the Internet, and so on. In short, the
dominance of English operates as a means of promoting globalization . The
dominance of English doubtlessly serves to facilitate globalization.
Globalization, in turn, assumes and encourages the use and dominance of English .
communication,

In other words, the dominance of English is a reflection of the structure of global relations. Australian applied linguist A.Pennycook, for

[I]ts
widespread use threatens other languages ; it has become the language of
power and prestige in many countries, thus acting as a crucial gatekeeper to
social and economic progress; its use in particular domains, especially professional, may
exacerbate different power relationships and may render these domains more inaccessible to many people;
example, points out the interrelationship between the dominance of English and the structure of global relations as follows:

its position in the world gives it a role also as an international gatekeeper, regulating the international flow of people; it is closely linked to

it is also bound up
with aspects of global relations, such as spread of capitalism, development
aid and the dominance particularly of North American media .(Pennycook, 1994, p.13) Thus
addressing the dominance of English is crucial to understanding the structure
of global relations. According to sociologist Roland Robertson, one of the most prominent scholars on "globalization,"
national and increasingly non-national forms of culture and knowledge that are dominant in the world; and

"globalization" as a concept refers to "the crystallization of the entire world as a single place" (Quoted in Arnason, 1990:220) or "the

Globalization" in
a more concrete sense is taking place primarily in economic domains in which
transnational corporations (TNCs) act as the agent to conduct business and trade beyond
compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole" (Robertson, 1992:8). "

the national borders. As a result, we live in a "global culture" in which our life is filled with products and information imported from overseas.
"Globalism," therefore, is the belief or a form of knowledge that "globalization" should happen. Globalism accepts "globalization" as natural.

globalization, in fact, causes the Americanization of the world

culture and McDonaldization of the society: it is not a process carefully planned, but it is a mere
affirmation of the structure of the unequal global relations in which a few
Center nations dominate over the Periphery nations. Thus, "globalism" justifies "globalization" as it
However, as I mentioned,

is happening today. "Globalism" prevents us from recognizing the three consequences of globalization including: (1)Anglo-Americanization,
(2)Transnationalization and (3)Commercialization of our contemporary life.

Link --- Generic Engagement Link

The perpetuation of linguistic dominance of English
through its use as a lingua franca and main language of
diplomacy is bad --- directly relates to imperialist
tendencies
Phillipson 8 --- Robert Phillipson is British, with degrees from the Universities of Cambridge
and Leeds, and a doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. Before emigrating to Denmark
in 1973 he worked for the British Council in four countries. He taught for many years at the
University of Roskilde, Denmark, which has specialised in multi-disciplinary, student-centred
learning. He is currently a Research Professor at the Department of English of Copenhagen
Business School. (THE LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM OF NEOLIBERAL EMPIRE, Robert Phillipson,
March 4, 2008, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15427580701696886)//chiragjain

We are experiencing massive changes in the worlds economy, ecology, and

communications. There is increasing inequality in our societies , and the military budget of
the United States has doubled under President George Bush. In tandem with these momentous changes ,
the use of English is increasing. There is therefore a real challenge to explore how and
why language use is changing, and how this relates to economic and political
factors. In clarifying the linguistic dimensions of globalization, in relation to corporate power and what
can be seen as the new imperialism (Harvey, 2005) or neoliberal empire (Pieterse, 2004), the
challenge for macro-sociolinguistics is to identify factors influencing current and future language policy. These issues are
addressed by documenting the expansion of global English, tracing its
historical roots, and attempting to elaborate adequate theoretical principles
for the study of neoimperial English. The progression in the article is from description, seeing global English as
product, process or project, through foundational influences and influential rhetoric advocating an intensification of English speaking as a
unifying factor globally, to theory-building that can capture and explain what we are experiencing. Global English: Product, Process, and Project

The English language has been taken worldwide by soldiers, traders, and
settlers, the process being initiated in the British Isles (Wales, Ireland et al.) and in the
colonies of North America. When these succeeded in detaching themselves
from the British crown in the late 18th century, Noah Webster made a case for
political independence being strengthened through linguistic independence
from Britain so as to establish a specific national characte r: Let us then seize the present moment, and
establish a national language as well as a national government.2 There have been blueprints for U.S.
dominance of the two American continents since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823
and for global domination for more than a century . Edward Saids study of
culture and imperialism notes (1993,p. 7) that The American experience, as Richard van
Alstyne makes clear in Rising American Em pire, was from the beginning founded upon an idea
of an imperiuma dominion, state or territory, and increase in strength and
power. Throughout the 20th century, the American Century, as Henry Luce termed it in Life magazine in 1942, the need for new markets
due to capital over-accumulation was a primary concern of U.S. foreign policy. Said ruefully notes, when exploring the key
role of ideas, of representations, and mental universes, that the rhetoric of
power all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when deployed in an
imperial setting,[: : : ] used [: : : ] with deafeningly repetitive frequency in the modern period, by the British, the French, the
Belgians, the Japanese, the Russians, and now the Americans (Said, 1993, p. xix). There is no clearer instance of
the way political discourse corrupts than when the dominant economic
system of capitalism has been conflated with democracy and freedom, the
rhetorical hubris of U.S. occupation. Opinions differ on the extent to which English

remains a single language or has spawned independent offspring, the English

languages (McArthur, 2002). The outcome of any assessment depends on how the evidence is approached and the purpose of such
sociolinguistic analysis, and there are serious weaknesses in the existing research on English worldwide (Bruthiaux, 2003). Despite Websters

there was no doubt about Anglo American linguistic and cultural unity in
Winston Churchills mindand in his ancestry, his mother was American. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in
efforts,

Literature largely on the strength of his A history of the English-speaking peoples (four volumes, Cassell, 195456), a celebration of peoples
united by English. In 1941 Prime Minister Churchill secretly met President Franklin Roosevelt to coordinate war strategy, and plan for the

the British Empire and the United

States who, fortunately for the progress of mankind, happen to speak the
same language and very largely think the same thoughts : : : (Morton, 1943, p. 152). This
language was not to be confined to the territories of the United Kingdom and the United States. It was an instrument
for disseminating the same thoughts throughout the British Empir e, encapsulated in
Lord Macaulays much quoted spin doctoring text on the role of British education in India, 1835, namely to produce A
class of persons, Indians in blood and color, English in taste, in opinion, in
morals and in intellect. U.S. President John Adams had earlier affirmed to Congress: English is destined
to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of
the world than Latin was in the last or French in the present age.3 As these examples suggest, efforts to globalize
English are not a new phenomenon: the manifest destiny that Americans have ascribed to themselves involves
ensuing peace. He declared in the House of Commons on 24 August 1941: : : :

a linguistic component. Empires have taken different forms over the past two centuries as a result of wars and economic and financial
changes, and to this day, linguistic globalisation remains a goal rather than a reality, an imagined community akin to nationalist
constructions (Anderson, 1983), a project in the minds of those who celebrate the dissemination of English worldwide. Learners of English may

Global English can be

seen as a product (the code, the forms used in a geographically diverse community of users), as a process (the means
by which uses of the language are being expanded, by agents activating the underlying structures,
ideologies, and uses), or as a project (the normative goal of English becoming the
default language of international communication and the dominant language of intranational
communication in an increasing number of countries worldwide). The processes and project are dependent
on use of the product, and on ideological commitment to the project . There is
a strong measure of wishful thinking in the projection of those who claim that
English is the worlds lingua franca, since maximally one-third of humanity have any
competence in the language at all. Likewise, the notion that English is the language of
science is contradicted by the fact that many other languages are used in
higher education and research. But such discourse serves both to constitute
and confirm English dominance and American empire, and the interlocking
structures and ideologies that underpin global English and corporate
interests. Investing in the linguistic capital of English (to use Bourdieus term, 1992) is a project that transcends national borders, with
the product and processes privileging users of the language in the current world order. This is profoundly influenced
by those who wield economic and finance capital (Harvey, 2004) and military might (Pieterse, 2004).
The power of English as a symbolic system in the global linguistic market is such
that its legitimacy tends to be uncritically accepted. Bourdieus analysis of the consolidation of the
well be motivated by a desire to become members of this imagined global community (Ryan, 2006).

power of the national (official) language can be upgraded to account for the ways in which English is being promoted and accepted globally: All
symbolic domination presupposes, on the part of those who submit to it, a form of complicity which is neither passive submission to external
constraint nor a free adherence to values. The recognition of the legitimacy of the official language [: : : ] is inscribed, in a practical state, in
dispositions which are impalpably inculcated, through a long and slow process of acquisition, by the sanctions of the linguistic market, and
which are therefore adjusted, without any cynical calculation or consciously experienced constraint, to the chances of material and symbolic
profit which the laws of price formation characteristic of a given market objectively offer to the holders of a given linguistic capital. (Bourdieu,
1992, pp. 5051) Attempting to develop adequate theory for exploring the nature and forms of the global linguistic market will be reverted to
in the final section of this article. We first need some idea of how the linguistic market is being shaped and legitimated.

Link --- International Law/Multilateralism

Jargon and speed of native speakers are used to oppress
others that speak in international conferences and
institutions
Tsuda 8 --- Professor in the Doctoral Program in Modern Cultures and Public Policies of the
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan,
Graduate School of International Development @ Nagoya University (The Hegemony of
English and Strategies for Linguistic Pluralism: Proposing the Ecology of Language Paradigm,
Yukio Tsuda, 2008)//chiragjain

There is a great gap in the working knowledge of English between native

speakers and non-native speakers, especially those speakers whose mother
tongues are linguistically distant from English . Thus, native speakers of English
intentionally try to push non-native speakers out of discussions by making a full
use of tactics that stem from phonetic, idiomatic, syntactic, and pragmatic
characteristics unique only in English...For example, they step up the speed of
speech, use a large number of jargons and idioms, or make utterances that are
grammatically complex.... These communicative tactics are used to take advantage of
lower proficiency of non-native speakers in English (Takahashi,1991,pp.188-189). As
Takahashi observed, it seems that native speakers of English in the Englishdominated conferences, use their linguistic advantage to magnify their power
so that they can establish the unequal and asymmetrical relationship with the nonEnglish-speakers and thus push them out of the mainstream of communication. There are a great many other
examples of linguistic and communicative inequality arising from the dominance of English, but it is sufficient to report
one more example. W.J. Coughlin, an American journalist, reports on the " Mokusatsu" mistake that caused the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Coughlin,1953). He reports that the Japanese prime minister's response of "
Mokusatsu" to the demand of complete surrender by the United Allies, was misinterpreted to mean "reject" the demand,
driving the then American President, Harry Truman, to decide on the atomic bombing. "Mokusatsu" actually means both

The point in this historic misunderstanding of a word is that in the

English-dominated Japan-U.S. communication, that the Americans always have
the control of semantics under which the subtle nuances of the Japanese
semantics are "ignored" or "overlooked." In other words, in the English-dominated communication,
English speakers are in a position to control communication to their own
advantage.
"ignore" and "no comment."

Afro-Pessimism

China Rise
Their motives to legalistically manage Chinese economic
development within statist frameworks obfuscates that
the foundational logics for their rise in the international
market are inseparable from the gratuitous consumption
of Africa.
Ayers 13 (Alison J. Ayers, Simon Fraser University (SFU), Political Science,
Sociology & Anthropology. Beyond Myths, Lies and Stereotypes: The Political
Economy of a New Scramble for Africa, New Political Economy, 18:2, 227257 -ERW)
Commentators across the political spectrum have increasingly drawn attention to a
new scramble for Africa. This new scramble marks the latest chapter of
imperialist engagement, with not only Western states and corporations but also those of
emerging economies (such as China, Russia, Brazil, India and Malaysia) seeking to consolidate
their access to African resources and markets . The new scramble for Africa involves
therefore significant politico-economic transformations related to shifts in global politico-economic power.
Accordingly, a burgeoning literature has emerged to make sense of the current historical conjuncture.
Indeed, as Roger Southall and Henning Melber argue, something big is happening in contemporary Africa
and there is an urgent need for us as analysts to seek to understand it (2009: xxiv). However, as this

much of the burgeoning literature on the new scramble for

Africa is premised upon problematic substantive, theoretical and ontological
claims and debates . In particular, the article seeks to challenge two commonplace and related
narratives. Firstly, the highly questionable representations of the scale and
perceived threat of emerging powers (particularly Chinas) involvement in Africa, in
contrast to the silences, hypocrisy and paternalistic representation of the
historical role of the West. As such, the Wests relations with Africa are construed as
essentially beneficent, in contrast to the putatively opportunistic, exploitative and
deleterious role of the emerging powers, thereby obfuscating the Wests
ongoing neocolonial relationship with Africa. Second, and relatedly, debate and
analysis are framed predominantly within an ahistoric statist framework of
analysis, particularly that of inter-state rivalry between China and other
emerging states vs. Western powers. Absent or neglected in such accounts
are profound changes in the global political economy within which the new
scramble for Africa is to be more adequately located. Without contextualising
the rise of China (and other emerging states) in the neoliberal capitalist global order,
it is too easy to single out the country without addressing the structural and
institutional forces that are driving not only China, but also other emerging
powers, to look with covetous eyes at Africas natural resources and markets
(Luk 2008: 13). This article interjects in such debates through critique of these two
commonplace but highly problematic narratives. In so doing, it seeks to contribute to a more
adequate analysis of politico-economic transformations in the twenty-first world order,
and Africas place within it. Yellow peril, dark continent, white mans burden Much of the
discussion and debate around the new scramble for Africa focuses on Chinas
engagement with Africa. Such accounts are characteristic of a wider discourse on the
article elaborates,

rise of China internationally and the so-called China threat evident in policymaking, social science and mass public discourse (Gertz 2000; Yee and Storey 2002;
Bernstein and Munro 1997; Mosher 2000; Mearsheimer 2006; Nam 2007; Curtis 2008). Such
representations give the impression that the African continent, and much of
the rest of the world, is in the process of being devoured by China , with
descriptors such as voracious, ravenous and insatiable appetite for natural resources used to
characterise Chinas new role (Guerrero and Manji 2008: 1; Mohan and Power 2008). Within the academic
literature Robert Rotberg argues, for example, that China is opportunistic, extractive and exploitive.
Chinas very rapaciousness its seeming insatiable demand for liquid forms of energy, and for the raw
materials that feed its widening industrial maw responds to sub-Saharan Africas relatively abundant
supplies of unprocessed metals, diamonds, and gold (Rotberg 2008: viii ix). Similarly, Peter Navarro, in
The Coming China Wars, illuminates the so-called dark sides of Chinas leap into globalisation, including
Chinas amoral involvement in Africa, arguing that Chinas tentacles reach throughout Africa in its quest
to access oil and other natural resources. Chinas Africa strategy, he concludes is a threat that will
colonise and economically enslave the vast majority of the continents population that lives outside the
elite circles. It is an imperialist marriage manufactured in China and made in hell (Navarro 2007: 100).

Similar concerns are echoed in Western foreign policy positions, particularly

within the United States. The Council on Foreign Relations Report, More Than Humanitarianism: A
Strategic US Approach Toward Africa, for example, highlights the threat of China on the continent (CFR

US Congress officials have voiced concerns that the Chinese

intend to aid and abet African dictators, gain a stronghold on precious African
natural resources, and undo much of the progress that has been made on
democracy and governance in the last 15 years in African nations (Rep.
2006). Similarly,

Christopher Smith, quoted in Naidu and Davies 2006: 69). Meanwhile, sensationalistic and Sinophobic
accounts in the Western media routinely invoke the specter of Chinese expansion, including Chinese
rapacity in Africa (Brown and Sriram 2008). Reviewing the UK print media, Emma Mawdsley reveals that
such accounts consistently depict China as ruthless, unscrupulous, amoral, greedy and coldly
indifferent (Mawdsley 2008: 517, 523). While French journalists Serge Michel and Michel Beuret in China
Safari: On the Trail of Beijings Expansion in Africa, liken Beijings role to that of the Godfather: Borrow
from the Chinese and you are drawn into the bosom of its highly profitable family. Beijing is the
Godfather, engaged in everything from textiles to infrastructure to uranium and oil. His bids are all

By contrast, the
operations of Western capital with the same ends are notably absent from
such accounts (Mawdsley 2008; Melber 2009), or are described with anodyne phrases
such as development, investment, employment generation (Guerrero and
interlinked and his motivation is constant (Michel and Beuret 2009: 108).

Manji 2008: 1). As such, commonplace accounts claim that Western powers have developed a new vision
of foreign partnership with Africa based on a shared agenda for change with the West undertaking

Both the silences on

the role of the West, together with the ahistoric distortions and flawed
understanding of the Wests ongoing neocolonial relationship with Africa
characteristic of such approaches, are highly problematic . Not least, as Kwesi Kwaa
ameliorative initiatives across Africa (Alden 2007: 9394; Rotberg 2008: 18).

Prah (2007) has argued, it is hypocritical of Western states to raise concerns about Chinas role in Africa,
given their long history of exploitative relations with Africa, which continue to the present day. Yet

Western powers continue to arrogate to themselves the project of spreading

enlightenment and culture to barbarous natives ... [whilst] seeking to
convince us about how bad and evil rapacious Chinese mercantilists are for
Africa, all the while continuing to rampage through Africa in search of
markets to conquer and mad mullahs to vanquish (Adebajo 2008: 227). As such, it
is necessary to shatter the Orientalist myth that often describes Chinas role
as that of a yellow peril seeking to monopolise markets, coddle caudillos and
condone human rights abuses on the continent; while Western powers . .. are
portrayed in contrast almost as knights in shining armour, seeking to assist
Africas economic recovery, spread democracy and contribute to conflict-

management efforts

(Adebajo 2008: 227) The engagement of China and that of other so-called
emerging states with Africa has undoubtedly undergone significant changes, particularly over the last
decade, with notable consequences within and beyond Africa. However, a fuller and more nuanced
understanding is required if we are to understand contemporary shifts in the centres of politico-economic
power within the twenty-first-century worldorder, and Africas place within it. This necessarily includes
analysis of the contemporary history of Western imperialism on the continent and the continuing
dominance of Western capital, albeit recognising that a significant spatial reorganisation of global

This spatial
reorganisation of global capitalism and its implications for and beyond Africa
are addressed in the subsequent section . This section interrogates commonplace Western
capitalism is occurring with the rise of the BRICs and other emerging states.

claims regarding the scale and threat of China and other emerging powers in Africa, and, relatedly,
subjects the ongoing role of the West in Africa to critical scrutiny.

Economic Engagement
We begin our discussion of economic engagement not
with <insert plan> but rather with the economic
engagement that helped to shape America, the middle
passage. What the affirmative has ignored is that
economic engagement does not manifest itself from a
desire for economic prosperity, but rather is engrained in
a libidinal desire for black flesh.
Wilderson 10, [Frank, Professor at UC Irvine, Red, White, and Black:
Cinema and Structure of US Antagonisms, P. 22-8]//MHELLIE
David Eltis is emphatic in his assertion that European civil societys decision
not to hunt for slaves along the banks of the Thames or other rivers in the
lands of White people or in prisons or poor houses was a bad business
decision that slowed the pace of economic development in both Europe and
the New World. Eltis writes: No Western European power after the Middle
Ages crosses the basic divide separating European workers from full chattel
slavery. And while serfdom fell and rose in different parts of early modern Europe
and shared characteristics with slavery, serfs were not outsiders either before or after
enserfment. The phrase long distance serf trade is an oxymoron. (1404) He goes

on to show how population growth patterns in Europe during the 1300s,

1400s, and 1500s far outpaced population growth patterns in Africa. He makes
this point not only to demonstrate how devastating the effect of chattel slavery was
on African population growth patternsin other words, to highlight its genocidal
impactbut also to make an equally profound but commonly overlooked

point. Europe was so heavily populated that had the Europeans been
more invested in the economic value of chattel slavery than they
were in the symbolic value of Black slavery and hence had instituted
a properly exploited system drawing on convicts, prisoners and
vagrants...[they] could easily have provided 50,000 [White slaves] a
year [to the New World] without serious disruption to either
international peace or the existing social institutions that generated
and supervised these potential European victims (1407). I raise Eltiss
counterposing of the symbolic value of slavery to the economic value of
slavery in order to debunk two gross misunderstandings: One is that workor
alienation and exploitationis a constituent element of slavery . Slavery, writes
Orlando Patterson, is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and
generally dishonored persons.ix Patterson goes to great lengths to delink his three
constituent elements of slavery from the labor that one is typically forced to
perform when one is enslaved. The forced labor is not constitutive of

enslavement because whereas it explains a common practice, it does not

define the structure of the power relation between those who are slaves and
those who are not. In pursuit of his constituent elements of slavery, a line of
inquiry that helps us separate experience (events) from ontology (the
capacities of poweror lack thereoflodged within distinct and irreconcilable

subject positions, e.g., Humans and Slaves), Patterson helps us denaturalize the
link between force and labor, and theorize the former as a phenomena that positions
a body, ontologically (paradigmatically), and the latter as a possible but not
inevitable experience of someone who is socially dead.x The other

misunderstanding I am attempting to correct is the notion that the profit

motive is the consideration within the slaveocracy that trumps all others.
David Marriott, Saidiya Hartman, Ronald Judy, Hortense Spillers, Orlando Patterson,
and Achille Mbembe have gone to considerable lengths to show that, in point of fact,

slavery is and connotes an ontological status for Blackness; and that the
constituent elements of slavery are not exploitation and alienation but
accumulation and fungibility (Hartman): the condition of being owned and
traded. As these Black writers have debunked conventional wisdom pertaining to the
grammar of slave suffering, so too has David Eltis provided a major corrective on
the commonsense wisdom that profit was the primary motive driving the
African slave trade. Eltis meticulously explains how the costs of enslavement
would have been driven exponentially down had White slaves been taken en
masse from European countries. Shipping costs from Europe to America were
considerably lower than shipping costs from Europe to Africa and then on to
America. He notes that shipping costs...comprised by far the greater part of the
price of any form of imported bonded labor in the Americas. If we take into account
the time spent collecting a slave cargo on the African coast as well, then the case for
sailing directly from Europe with a cargo of [Whites] appears stronger again (1405).

Eltis sums up his data by concluding that if European merchants, planters,

and statesmen imposed chattel slavery on some members of their own
society say, only 50,000 White slaves per yearthen not only would
European civil society have been able to absorb the social consequences of
these losses, in other words class warfare would have been unlikely even at
this rate of enslavement, but civil society would [also] have enjoyed lower
labor costs, a faster development of the Americas, and higher exports and income
levels on both sides of the Atlantic (1422). But what Whites would have gained
in economic value, they would have lost in symbolic value; and it is the latter
which structures the libidinal economy of civil society. White chattel slavery
would have meant that the aura of the social contract had been completely
stripped from the body of the convict, vagrant, beggar, indentured servant, or
child. This is a subtle point but one vital to our understanding of the relationship
between the world of Blacks and the world of Humans. Even under the most
extreme forms of coercion in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern
periodfor example, the provisional and selective enslavement of English
vagrants from the early to mid-1500s to the mid-1700sthe power of the
state over [convicts in the Old World] and the power of the master over
[convicts in the New World] was more circumscribed than that of the slave
owner over the slave (Eltis 1410). Marx himself takes note of the preconscious
politicaland, by implication, unconscious libidinalcosts to civil society, had
European elites been willing to enslave Whites (Capital Vol. 1, 896-905). In fact,
though widespread anti-vagabond laws of King Edward VI (1547), Queen Elizabeth
(1572), King James I, and Frances Louis XVI (1777) all passed ordinances similar to
Edward VIs which proclaimed that: [I]f anyone refuses to work, he shall be
condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master

shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he
thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting,
with whip and chains. If the slave is absent for a fortnight, he is condemned to
slavery for life and is to be branded on the forehead or back with the letter S...The
master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as he can any
other personal chattel or cattle...All persons have the right to take away the children
of the vagabonds and keep them as apprentices, the young men until they are 24,
the girls until they are 20. (897) These laws were so controversial, even among elites,
that they could never take hold as widespread social and economic phenomena. But I

am more interested in the symbolic value of Whiteness (and the absence of

Blacknesss value), gleaned from a close reading of the laws themselves,
than I am in a historical account of the lived experience of the White poors
resistance to, or the White elites ambivalence toward, such ordinances. The
actual ordinance(s) manifests the symptoms of its own internal resistance long before
either parliament or the poor themselves mount external challenges to it.

Symptomatic of civil societys libidinal safety net is the above ordinances

repeated use of the word if. If anyone refuses to work...if the slave is absent
for a fortnight... The violence of slavery is repeatedly checked, subdued into
becoming a contingent violence for that entity which is beginning to call itself
White; at the very same moment that it is being ratcheted up to a gratuitous
violence for that entity which is being called (by Whites) Black. All the ordinances
of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries which Marx either quotes at length or
discusses are ordinances which seem, on their face, to debunk my claim that
slavery for Whites was/is experiential and that for Blacks it was/is ontological.
And yet all of these ordinances are riddled with contingencies, of which frequent and
unfettered deployment of the conjunction if is emblematic. Both Spillers and Eltis
remind us that the archive of African slavery shows no internal

recognition of the libidinal costs of turning human bodies into

sentient flesh. From Marxs reports on proposed vagabond-into-slave
legislation, it becomes clear that the libidinal economy of such
European legislation is far too unconsciously invested in saving
the symbolic value of the very vagabonds such laws consciously seek
to enslave. In other words, the law would rather shoot itself (that is, sacrifice
the economic development of the New World) in the foot than step into a
subjective void where idlers and vagabonds might find themselves without
contemporaries, with no relational status to save. In this way, White-on-White
violence is put in check (a) before it becomes gratuitous , or structural, before it
can shred the fabric of civil society beyond mending; and (b) before conscious,
predictable, and sometimes costly challenges are mounted against the legislation
despite its dissembling lack of resolve. This is accomplished by the imposition of the
numerous on condition that... and supposing that... clauses bound up in the word
if and also by claims bound up in the language around the enslavement of
European children: a White child may be enslaved on condition that s/he is the child
of a vagabond, and then, only until the age of 20 or 24. Hortense Spillers searched

the archives for a similar kind of stop-gap language with respect to the
Africansome indication of the Africans human value in the libidinal
economy of Little Baby Civil Society. She came up as empty handed: Expecting
to find direct and amplified reference to African women during the opening years of

the Trade, the observer is disappointed time and again that this cultural subject is

concealed beneath the overwhelming debris of the itemized account,

between the lines of the massive logs of commercial enterprise [e.g., a ships
cargo record] that overrun the sense of clarity we believed we had gained
concerning this collective humiliation. (Spillers 210) It would be reassuring to say
that Europeans rigorously debated the ethical implications of forcing the social death
of slavery upon Africans before they went ahead with it; but, as Marx, Eltis, and
Spillers make abundantly clear, it would be more accurate simply to say that African

slavery did not present an ethical dilemma for global civil society. The ethical
dilemmas were unthought.

Foreign Policy
Their singular focus on foreign policy and foreign wars
obfuscates the war on blackness that occurs everyday.
Martinot & Sexton 2003 [Steve & Jared, Steve, a lecturer at San Francisco
State University in the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs, Jared, Associate
Professor at UC Irvine Ph.D, The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy, Social
Identities, Volume 9, Number 2, 2003, P. 171-2]//MHELLIE
*edited for ablest language

They prowl, categorising and profiling, often turning those profiles into
murderous violence without (serious) fear of being called to account, all the
while claiming impunity. What jars the imagination is not the fact of impunity itself, but the
realisation that they are simply people working a job, a job they secured by making an application at the
personnel office. In events such as the shooting of Amadou Diallo, the true excessiveness is not in the
massiveness of the shooting, but in the fact that these cops were there on the street looking for this event
in the first place, as a matter of routine business .

This spectacular evil is encased in a

more inarticulable evil of banality, namely, that the state assigns certain
individuals to (well-paying) jobs as hunters of human beings, a furtive protocol for
which this shooting is simply the effect. But they do more than prowl. They make problematic the whole

we no longer know if the police are responsible

to the judiciary and local administration or if the city is actually responsible to
them, duty bound by impunity itself. To the extent to which the police are a
law unto themselves, the latter would have to be the case. This
unaccountable vector of inverted social responsibility would resonate in the
operating procedures in upper levels of civil administration as well. That is,
civil governmental structures would act in accordance with the paradigm of
policing wanton violence legitimised by strict conformity to procedural
regulations. For instance, consider the recent case of a 12-year-old African-American boy sentenced to
notion of social responsibility such that

prison for life without parole for having killed a 6-year-old African-American girl while acting out the moves
he had seen in professional wrestling matches on TV. In demanding this sentence, the prosecutor argued
that the boy was a permanent menace to society and had killed the girl out of extreme malice and
consciousness of what he was doing. A 12-year-old child, yet Lionel Tate was given life without parole. In
the name of social sanctity, the judicial system successfully terrorised yet another human being, his
friends, and relatives by carrying its proceduralism to the limit. The corporate media did the rest; several
commentators ridiculed Tates claim to have imitated wrestling moves, rewriting his statement as a
disreputable excuse: pro wrestling made me do it (San Francisco Chronicle, 25 March 2001). Thus, they
transformed his naive awareness of bodies into intentional weaponry and cunning. One could surmise, with
greater justification than surmising the malice of the child, that the prosecutor made a significant career
step by getting this high-profile conviction. Beyond the promotion he would secure for a job well done,
beyond the mechanical performance of official outrage and the cynicism exhibited in playing the role, what
animus drove the prosecutor to demand such a sentence? In the face of the prosecutions sanctimonious
excess, those who bear witness to Tates suffering have only inarticulate outrage to offer as consolation.

With recourse only to the usual rhetorical expletives about racism, the
procedural ritualism of this white supremacist operation has confronted them
with the absence of a real means of discerning the judiciarys dissimulated
machinations. The prosecutor was the banal functionary of a civil structure, a
paradigmatic exercise of wanton violence that parades as moral rectitude but
whose source is the paradigm of policing. All attempts to explain the
malicious standard operating procedure of US white supremacy find
themselves hamstrung by conceptual inadequacy; it remains describable, but
not comprehensible. The story can be told, as the 41 bullets fired to slaughter Diallo can be
counted, but the ethical meaning remains beyond the discursive resources of civil society, outside the

framework for thinkable thought. It is, of course, possible to speak out against such white supremacist
violence as immoral, as illegal, even unconstitutional. But the impossibility of thinking through to the

For those who are not racially profiled or

tortured when arrested, who are not tried and sentenced with the
presumption of guilt, who are not shot reaching for their identification, all of
this is imminently ignorable. Between the inability to see and the refusal to
acknowledge, a mode of social organisation is being cultivated for which the
paradigm of policing is the cutting edge. We shall have to look beyond racialised police
violence to see its logic. The impunity of racist police violence is the first implication
of its ignorability to white civil society. The ignorability of police impunity is
what renders it inarticulable outside of that hegemonic formation. If ethics is
possible for white civil society within its social discourses, it is rendered
irrelevant to the systematic violence deployed against the outside precisely
because it is ignorable. Indeed, that ignorability becomes the condition of possibility for the ethical
ethical dimension has a hidden structural effect.

coherence of the inside. The dichotomy between a white ethical dimension and its irrelevance to the

It is a twin structure, a
regime of violence that operates in two registers, terror and the seduction
into the fraudulent ethics of social order; a double economy of terror,
structured by a ritual of incessant performance . And into the gap between them,
violence of police profiling is the very structure of racialisation today.

common sense, which cannot account for the double register or twin structure of this ritual, disappears
into incomprehensibility. The language of common sense, through which we bespeak our social world in
the most common way, leaves us speechless before the enormity of the usual, of the business of civil
procedures.

IR discourse epitomizes whiteness it relies on

Eurocentric concepts of civility and conceals colonial
history
-- IR is a product of whiteness it ignores history, lacks specificity or context and acts
only to preserve state sovereignty

Krishna 9

Sankaran, teaches international relations and comparative politics as the University of

Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, HI. His most recent book is "Globalization and Postcolonialism: hegemony
and resistance in the 21st century". (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). PWoods.

after two world wars, the rising tide of anti-colonial nationalism

across three continents (Asia, Africa and Latin America), and the growing
refusal of those who were the objects of its inquiry to recognize
themselves in its descriptions, a decolonized Anthropology could no longer be delayed, even as significant
Yet,

numbers of scholars resisted such an effort. One could chart a similar trajectory with varying degree of success - in disciplines such as

The realization that power

and knowledge were inextricably intertwined, and that western
descriptions of the non-west were never innocent of their own political,
economic and other interests in those spaces, gradually worked their
way towards a still incomplete and ongoing process of decolonization
of these disciplines. For a variety of reasons, the discipline of International Relations
(IR) has been extraordinarily resistant to a decolonizing impulse.
Firstly, IR emerged within the United States, a society that is
ferociously amnesiac about its own (domestic) history as a settlercolony and an (external) history as a colonizer in Latin America, the
History, Sociology, Political Science, Economics and others as the 20 th century unfolded.

Pacific Islands, the Far East, etc. The US has instead emphasized its
post-colonial status in that it broke away from Britain in the late 18th
century and (intermittently) supported the decolonization efforts of third world
countries seeking independence from England, France or Japan. This
assiduous forgetting of the genocide (of Native Americans) and slavery
(of Africans exported to the New World) central to the founding of the
United States has carried over into the quintessentially American
discipline of IR which often talks of the relations between nations as if
they were ahistorical entities which suddenly emerged all identical
and sovereign - sometime in the middle of the 20th century. Second, emerging as
it did in the interregnum between two horrific world wars, IR has always focused on explaining the
conditions that lead to war and ways to prevent it. This has produced
an obsession with issues of national security, and especially of the
need to avoid irresponsible policy or idealism that could lower ones
guard and create the conditions for war. Historical issues such as colonialism were deemed less
relevant and priority accorded to a presentism that continuously focused on threats to national security and opportunities to enhance

IR discourse is predominantly a prose of counterinsurgency: it is governed by a methodological nationalism that it is

designed at every turn to avert all threats to statist sovereignty. And thirdly,
IR has sought to construct itself in the image of a scientific discipline,
one that aims to uncover the invariant laws that govern relations
between nations. This emphasis on achieving a universal science
applicable in all situations has meant that IR has a strong preference
for abstract theory at the expense of historical contexts and specificity.
national interests. In other words,

Their grammar of geopolitics misunderstands global

power the absolute dereliction produced by the
gratuitous sexual violence of slavery constituted an entire
global colonial order, acting as the crucial lever for
American empire rather than understanding Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia as separate continents with distinct
nation-states, you should treat them as nodes in a vast,
inextricable network of intimate everyday trauma and
sexual degradation
Lowe 15

(Lisa Lowe, Professor of English and American Studies at Tufts University, and a member of

the consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, The Intimacies of Four Continents , pgs.
167-171)
Du Bois argued that slavery was the fundamental contradiction of U.S. history and
was frank and forthright that the social, political, and economic practices that issued from slavery
damaged American democratic premises, distorted its institutions, and disrupted its social life. The true
significance of slavery in the United States to the whole social development of America lay in the ultimate
relation of slaves to democracy. 86 Not only did the revelation of slavery belie the promises of democracy;

the force of potential slave revolt and the threat of slave rebellion lay
beneath all of the nations political processes. 87 He was very specific about the
brutality of slavery as a regime for extracting surplus value and stressed that

the ownership of human persons subjected those men and women to

violence, indignity, rape, and forcible separations from their kin and
community. While he discussed deliberate commercial breeding and sale of human labor for profit
and toward the intermingling of black and white blood as a cornerstone of slaverys violence, the
consideration of Black womens emancipation fell beyond his scope, and Black feminist historians and
theorists have pursued further the analysis of slavery and its aftermath, in terms of the conditions within
which slave women were systematically subjected to rape, and their forced reproductive labor and

slavery was not an aberration of liberal

democracy in the United States but its central contradiction ; he argued that slavery
offspring appropriated. 88 In Du Boiss history,

was and continued to be systemic and constitutive of U.S. democracy, and of the extension of American
power around the world. Slavery, which had violently brought Black workers into the modern world system,
was at the heart of modern liberal democracy. He told the story of half a million Black workers who were
the founding stone of a new economic system in the nineteenth century and for the modern world, who
brought the Civil War (67), and who, by their mass exodus from the southern slave plantations, seized the
opportunity to create a General Strike to stop the plantation system that brought the Confederacy to its
knees: This slow, stubborn mutiny of the Negro slaves was not merely a matter of 200,000 black soldiers
and perhaps 300,000 other black laborers. Back of this half million stood 3 12 million more. Without their
labor the South would starve. With arms in their hands, Negroes would form a fighting force which could
replace every single Northern white soldier fighting listlessly and against his will with a black man fighting
for freedom. 89 In Du Boiss epic history, the subject of the history of emancipation was neither the
abolitionist nor the political leader; it was the mass movement of fugitive slaves who won the Civil War,
who compelled the North to make the abolition of slavery its issue, and who made the slaveholders face
their surrender to the North. In emphasizing the historical subjectivity of the Black laborers in the Great
Strike, Du Bois situated them as central actors in the unfolding of the U.S. Civil War. Furthermore, his
account also explains the retrenchment and refortification of white racial capital during Reconstruction in
terms of their recognition of the enormous collective power of the Black freedom struggle. Both the white
industrialists and white planters recognized the significance of the former slaves to transform the social
and economic system, and sought to vanquish the slaves attainment of freedom. Black Reconstruction
told a history of the consolidation of northern industrial finance capitalism and southern planters, and of
ruling-class whites aggressively recruiting poor southern whites as their allies, dividing the black and white
workers to prevent their joining in common struggle. The masters fear their former slaves. They
forestalled the danger of a united Southern labor movement by appealing to the fear and hate of white
labor. 90 The historical convergence of the interests of the black slaves and the white peasants had made
the victory of the North possible; but the state, and both northern and southern white interests, were all
threatened by the possible longevity of cross-racial worker solidarity. Black Reconstruction details the
collaboration between the state, northern white industrial capital, and southern white planter oligarchy, to

The
possible union of four million ex-slaves and five million white peasant laborers
represented a potential revolutionary force. It was against this possible
convergence, Du Bois argued, that the interests of capital and the southern white
ruling class organized, so that it might enact the new capitalism and a new
enslavement of labor. 91 Finally, in Du Boiss historical analysis, the post-Reconstruction new
divide white labor from what could have been their common cause with the Black proletariat.

capitalism and new enslavement of labor described a shift in capitalist economy that was not restricted to
Black slavery in the United States; it precisely set in motion the mid-century globalization of capitalism. In

the liberal promises of humanitarian abolition

and emancipation did not end slavery, but enabled the triumph of U.S.
capitalist industry that inaugurated instead the expansion of capitalism
globally, permitting the re-enslavement of labor linking Africa, Asia, and the
Americas: Within the very echo of that philanthropy which had abolished the slave trade, was
beginning a new industrial slavery of black and brown and yellow workers in Africa and Asia. The new
northern industrialists led this consolidation of global capitalism: fired by a
vision of concentrated economic power and profit greater than the world had
envisioned that linked with capitalist classes elsewhere to unite in the
exploitation of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands and
breeds without laws.92 This new capitalist imperialism was built on the
assets and surplus value extracted from slavery, and it required the counterrevolution of property to suppress the cross-racial alliance of workers in the
United States, and across the globe. As Moon-Ho Jung has explained, If enslaved black labor
1935, Du Bois captured the way in which

had laid the foundation of U.S. and European empires, its re-enslavement through an agreement between
big business and the white south heralded the age of what Du Bois called international and commercial

imperialism, which would lead directly to the Great War and the Great Depression. 93 In this sense,
inasmuch as Black Reconstruction has been canonized as a history of the unfinished revolution of the

it was also an analysis of the centrality of Black

slave labor to the formation of a racialized global capitalism that was built on
colonialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Moreover, if Du Boiss history
featured the reproduction of racial difference at the center of the
consolidation of U.S. capitalism, it also framed the importance of the alliances
among differently racialized laboring peoples across the world in the ongoing
struggle against the expanding U.S. empire. In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois
viewed slavery in the United States as an integral part of capitalist
imperialism as a global phenomenon, and understood the General Strike of
Black slaves as one part of the struggle of a necessarily international working
class of color: The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is
the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown, and black. 94 He was
concerned not only with the history of Black slave labor but with that dark
and vast sea of human labor in China and India, the South Seas and all Africa;
in the West Indies and Central America and in the United States. 95 His
history connected the forms of labor extraction employed in U.S. slavery with
the exploitation of laborers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the
consolidation of a new capitalism that extended globally. The development
of American industrial capitalism, which depended on slave labor, was deeply
connected with the exploitation of agrarian laborers on plantations in Asia
and the Pacific Islands, in India and islands in the Indian Ocean, in Africa, and
in Latin America, where plantation systems had also been established to
profit from imported and indigenous colonized workers. Across the world, peasant
Black working class in the United States,

workers had been and were becoming the communities of rebellion against capitalist imperialism; under
the new capitalism, these laborers immigrated to the industrialized countries, where they were recruited

Du Bois situated the

African American freedom struggle within a world historical struggle of
laborers of color and implied that the struggle of Black labor did not depend
on recognition by white Americans or the U.S. state, but on recognition by
other laborers of color in the colonized world. In this way, his narrative of
Black slaves in the Civil War and Reconstruction not only revised Marxs
subject of history, but it framed a history of slavery within the emergence of
a world system of capitalism and imperial sovereignty. Du Bois did not tell the history
as a new labor force in manufacturing and production. In Black Reconstruction,

of African American struggle as if it were exclusively a national struggle, bounded by the history of the

the Black American struggle was situated as central to the

apotheosis of Anglo-American empire, and within the broader struggle of
laborers from China, India, Mexico, and elsewhere. Du Bois was not satisfied with Black
United States. Rather

American enfranchisement as the endpoint of the antislavery struggle; he was concerned with
international social justice. In Eric Porters analysis, Du Bois understood that the persistence and revision
of slaverys and colonialisms racist legacies, and the faith that they were being overcome, produced
emergent forms of racism in his present. 96 In other words, Du Boiss Black Reconstruction was deeply
concerned that the counter-revolution of property that had defeated Reconstruction, had also advanced

Du Bois cautioned that the pursuit of political

enfranchisement for a single group within an imperial United States could
contribute to the subordination of others, both inside and outside of the
American capitalist empire.
U.S. exploitation of the decolonizing world.

Their focus on international conflicts only ignores the

living apocalypse for people of color under the domestic
warfare of white supremacy
-- Their focus on foreign wars trades off with a focus on the wars on our streets

Rodriguez, 08

[2008, Dylan Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California

Riverside, Abolition Now! p.93-100]

We are collectively witnessing, surviving, and working in a time of

unprecedented state-organized human capture and state-produced
physical/social/ psychic alienation, from the 2.5 million imprisoned by the
domestic and global US prison industrial complex to the profound forms of
informal apartheid and proto- apartheid that are being instantiated in
cities, suburbs, and rural areas all over the country. This condition presents
a profound crisisand political possibilityfor people struggling against
the white supremacist state, which continues to institutionalize the social
liquidation and physical evisceration of Black , brown, and aboriginal peoples nearby
and far away. If we are to approach racism, neoliberalism,
militarism/militarization, and US state hegemony and domination in a
legitimately "global" way, it is nothing short of unconscionable to expend
significant political energy protesting American wars elsewhere (e.g. Iraq,
Afghanistan etc.) when there are overlapping, and no less profoundly
oppressive, declarations of and mobilizations for war in our very own, most
intimate and nearby geographies of "home." This time of crisis and
emergency necessitates a critical examination of the political and institutional
logics that structure so much of the US progressive left, and particularly the "establishment" left
that is tethered (for better and worse) to the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC). I
have defined the NPIC elsewhere as the set of symbiotic relationships that link political and financial
technologies of state and owning class social control with surveillance over public political discourse,
including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social movements. This definition is most
focused on the industrialized incorporation, accelerated since the 1970s, of pro-state liberal and
progressive campaigns and movements into a spectrum of government-proctored non-profit

It is in the context of the formation of the NPIC as a political

power structure that I wish to address, with a less-than-subtle sense of alarm, a
peculiar and disturbing politics of assumption that often structures,
disciplines, and actively shapes the work of even the most progressive
movements and organizations within the US establishment left (of which I too
am a part, for better and worse): that is, the left's willingness to fundamentally
tolerateand accompanying unwillingness to abolishthe institutionalized
dehumanization of the contemporary policing and imprisonment apparatus
organizations.

in its most localized, unremarkable, and hence "normal" manifestations within the domestic

Behind the din of progressive and liberal

reformist struggles over public policy, civil liberties, and law , and beneath the
"homeland" of the Homeland Security state.

infrequent mobilizations of activity to defend against the next onslaught of racist, classist, ageist, and

there is an unspoken politics of assumption that takes

for granted the mystified permanence of domestic warfare as a constant
production of targeted and massive suffering , guided by the logic of Black,
brown, and indigenous subjection to the expediencies and ESSENTIAL VIOLENCE OF
THE AMERICAN (GLOBAL) NATION-BUILDING PROJECT. To put it differently: despite the
unprecedented forms of imprisonment, social and political repression, and
violent policing that compose the mosaic of our historical time, the establishment left
(within and perhaps beyond the US) does not care to envision, much less politically
prioritize, the abolition of US domestic warfare and its structuring white
misogynist crirninalization,

supremacist social logic as its most urgent task of the present and future.
Our non-profit left, in particular, seems content to engage in desperate (and
usually well-intentioned) attempts to manage the casualties of domestic warfare,
foregoing the urgency of an abolitionist praxis that openly, critically, and
radically addresses the moral, cultural, and political premises of these
wars. Not long from now, generations will emerge from the organic
accumulation of rage, suffering, social alienation, and (we hope) politically
principled rebellion against this living apocalypse and pose to us some
rudimentary questions of radical accountability: How were we able to accommodate,
and even culturally and politically normalize the strategic, explicit, and openly racist technologies of
state violence that effectively socially neutralized and frequently liquidated entire nearby populations
of our people, given that ours are the very same populations that have historically struggled to survive
and overthrow such "classical" structures of dominance as colonialism, frontier conquest, racial slavery,

how could we live with

ourselves in this domestic state of emergency, and why did we seem to
generally forfeit the creative possibilities of radically challenging,
dislodging, and transforming the ideological and institutional premises of
this condition of domestic warfare in favor of short-term, "winnable" policy
reforms? (For example, why did we choose to formulate and tolerate a "progressive" political
and other genocides? In a somewhat more intimate sense,

language that reinforced dominant racist notions of "criminality" in the process of trying to discredit the
legal basis of "Three Strikes" laws?) What were the fundamental concerns of our progressive
organizations and movements during this time, and were they willing to comprehend and galvanize an
effective, or even viable opposition to the white supremacist state's terms of engagement (that is,
warfare)? 'this radical accountability reflects a variation on anti- colonial liberation theorist Frantz
Fanon's memorable statement to his own peers, comrades, and nemeses: Each generation must
discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity. In the underdeveloped countries preceding
generations have simultaneously resisted the insidious agenda of colonialism and paved the way for

we are in the heat of combat, we must

shed the habit of decrying the efforts of our forefathers or feigning
incomprehension at their silence or passiveness. Our historical moment
suggests the need for a principled political rupturing of existing techniques
and strategies that fetishize and fixate on the negotiation, massaging, and
management of the worst outcomes of domestic warfare. One political
move long overdue is toward grassroots pedagogies of radical disidentification with the state, in the trajectory of an anti-nationalism or antipatriotism, that reorients a progressive identification with the creative
possibilities of insurgency (this is to consider insurgency as a politics that
pushes beyond the defensive maneuvering of resistance). Reading a few
lines down from our first invoking of Fanons call to collective, liberatory
action is clarifying here: For us who are determined to break the back of
colonialism, our historic mission is to authorize every revolt, every
desperate act, and every attack aborted or drowned in blood.
the emergence of the current struggles. Now that

International Relations
Discussions of international relations focus solely on
macro-political superstructures while ignoring the macrometaphysical superstructure that coheres civil society.
Persaud et al 01 [Randolph B, associate Professor School of International
Service, R.B.J, Apertura: Race in International Relations,
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-82517371/apertura-race-ininternational-relations]//MHELLIE
international relations has shown a famous aversion to complex
and multiply contested concepts. It has been especially silent about
race, as about many other practices that cannot be quickly reduced to
claims about the necessities of states in a modern states-system . Like
culture, economy, or gender , it does not fit into the prevailing division of the world
into "levels" above (the international) and below (the individual) the state. Unlike culture,
economy, and gender, there has been very little attempt to insist that claims
about race do indeed deserve serious discussion in the context of a
changing international or global order. From time to time, of course, the
discipline does open up to problems hitherto deemed outside its
epistemological boundaries. "Opening up" has historically resulted from
sustained wars of position between the forces that represent a broadening of
the proper subjects of the discipline and those who insist that international
relations (IR) is about "war and peace" among states. It may be time for one
more apertura; namely, for race to be systematically incorporated into the
analysis of global politics. Consider the following: The first global attempt to speak of equality
The theory of

focused upon race. The first human rights provisions in the United Nations Charter were placed there

The first international challenge to a country's claim of domestic

jurisdiction and exclusive treatment of its own citizens centered upon race . The
international convention with the greatest number of signatories is that on
race. Within the United Nations, more resolutions deal with race than any other
subject. And certainly one of the most long-standing and frustrating problems in the United Nations is
because of race.

that of race. Nearly one hundred eighty governments, for example, recently went as far as to conclude that
racial discrimination and racism still represent the most serious problems for the world today. (1) Extensive

The
significance of race goes much beyond various multilateral and other
diplomatic achievements. Race has been a fundamental force in the very
making of the modern world system and in the representations and
explanations of how that system emerged and how it works . This can only be
as it is, the above synopsis provided by Paul G. Lauren must be viewed as very limited indeed.

understood, however, if we look at race as an interrelated set of material, ideological, and epistemological

The articulation of these latter into full-fledged racialized discourses

have produced, over time, social formations and even world orders that were
macrostructural systems of inclusion and exclusion .
practices.

Multilateralism
Engagement with multilateral institutions requires a
process of racialized socialization which psychologically
numbs experts to ongoing anti-black genocides. This
form of unconscious altruism renders racial violence
incalcuble within liberal discussions.
Shields 95 (David L. L. Shields retired United States ambassador and
teaches in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of
California at Berkeley, The Color of Hunger: Race and Hunger in National and
International Perspective ERW)
-Psychological and empirical indict to both scholarship and the skills the Aff creates. They
create policymakers, but those policymakers are only benign in the face of violence.

there is considerable racism in most international institutions , but it is a

racism of neglect rather than of intent. It is subtle, it is underlying, and it is
difficult to detect with conventional lenses. If we define racism as exclusion from a position,
privilege, or organization based on skin color , then we would have to conclude that most
international public organizations are remarkably nonracist. But if we judge these organizations
in terms of the impact of their work, we would have to see that , too Often,
people of color have borne the harshest part of economic and political
changes, including those orchestrated by international aid agencies. In other
words, despite a presumed lack of such intent, an uncanny racial bias exists in the
consequences of many actions and policy decisions of multilateral
institutions. This, of course, is a generalization, and, thankfully, one also finds exceptions to this. As an
I believe

illustration, let us consider the World Bank, by any standard a powerful designer of economic change in
many poor I've had two different occasions to work at the World Bank, and each time I was impressed by
its firepower and financial I was also impressed by how little overt racism existed there. The first time, I
worked for a Kenyan, Who reported to an American, who reported to a Pakistani. Another time, reported to
an Israeli, who reported to an Australian, who to a gentleman from Ghana. The Bank has developed the
remarkable ability to overcome at least the more obvious forms of racism. In light of the apparent
multiculturalism in the Bank's chain of command, some observations incongruent. One stood out with

Given the of staff from the Third World, I expected the entire
organization to be infused with a sense of urgency and personal commitment
to end poverty and injustice. Afterall, hunger is torturously killing of color at
such a rate that an outside observer (perhaps a newcomer from Mars) could plausibly
conclude that the dominant North was engaged in a worldwide policy of
"ethnic cleansing" by its inatten- tion. But, sonwhow, it seemed that despite the
representation of races, nations, and peoples, there was something even more powerful
that made most employees conform to a rather uninspired state of being.
particular poignancy.

During the mid-1980s when I worked at the Bank, I found little sense of the urgency or impatience that our
situation warranted. Most of us intellectu- ally realized that we were losing the battle against poverty, but

psychologically distanced from the

realities of poverty in our home countries. I remember feeling that many of us had
lost our idealism and had become just cogs in an international bureaucra- cy

this realization unsure of our personal commitments and

that viewed development as its job but not its passion and dream. To understand the genesis of this reality,
I think

we need to examine the socializa- tion process that occurs within

most

such agencies. Most international agencies maintain that their best employees give up their national
loyalties to become professional international civil servants. There is much to be said for eschewing
national chauvinism and becoming global in one's orientation. But this particular of socialization has a

In the process of assimilating into this faceless interna- tional

bureaucracy (with its own notions of careers, promotions, professional- ism, and perks), many of
us lose sense of why we got into this line of work in the first place. This
confusion is further exacerbated by the jargon and convoluted rhetoric that are
the daily currency of many agencies. process of conforming can become a process
of deforming. I suspwt that this rootless Of Sorne imple (such as many of those inhabiting
transnational agencies) is in part responsible for the insensitivity and maladroitness of many
policies. A number of months before the United Nations took action in Somalia, a
most-senior African official Of the United Nations appeared on "Nightline" and his
organization's lethargic response to the crisis of Somalia. The kinds of
procedural, bureaucratic, and excuses that he presented could have come
out of a Franz novel. While people were being slaughtered and starved on an
unfathomable scale , he was passing the buck from one agency to another. His
shadow side, as well.

attitude would have made even Max Weber, the master of modern bureaucracy, cringe in disbelief. Just

As countries
such as Somalia and Rwanda (among many others) lurch into ever-deepening
crises, the leaders and officialdom of the United Nations seem ever so paralyzed,
unclear about their own objectives and caught in the crossfire and politicking of
imagine what a difference a timely intervention by the United Nations mi*lt have made.

member-states. Becau* the values and principles of the United Nations are rhetorically recitd but

the organization repeatedly finds itself following the path

of least resistance. Nowhere is the implicit racism of international aid
buraucracies more evident than in the ways in which we support a veritable army
of foreign experts in developing countries. Where technical skills combind with common sene,
compassion, and a spirit of appreciative inquiry is nessary, we bring in high-paid, Elf-promoting
"experts" who tell "them" at what they already know, but in a that is no longer By
creating this new caste of development experts , have confused rather than
eased the path to social progress. As a consultant myself, I have a healthy regard for the
inadequately internalized,

value of indeixn- dent and experti. But I also know that too often the provided by outside experts on
development is not worth the pa*r it is presented onand certainly not worth the bill that comes with it.

too large a portion of the intemational assistance is

driven by a sense of white superiority (however subtle) and donor nationalism,
rather than the actual needs of development. Those of you who have worked in the

Further- more, I subrnit to you that

development field know only too well the phenomenon of itinerant, Westem consultants who spend the
first half of their extended visits learning from thox on the ground and the second half of their tenure
pontifi- cating to those from whom they have just learned. Right now, there are about 80,000 foreign (read
Western) experts in Africa, and it costs a minimum Of $150,000 a year per person to keep thern there. I
ask you, how many of these so-called experts know more about Africa than their African counterparts? The
European Development Fund, which was set up as Europe's conscientious response to the crises in their
old colonies, has foreign expatriates running about 90 percent of its projects in Africa, the Caribbean, and
the Pacific. Throughout the Third World, we a staggering $15 to $22 billion a yeara third to a half of all
bilateral and multilateral foreign aid moneyto support Westem exr*rts, who live like nobility and speak

we are
practicing a kind of foreign aid apart- heid, ail the while preaching the good
words of self-determination, self- reliance, and progress at the graoots. Is this really the
nobly of the poor. By overpaying expatriates and a sekct group of privileged nationals,

best way to engender indinous capabilities? Foreign expertise can be helpful and well worth its price tag,
but only if such experti* is focud on critical needs and rapidly Just as in Manifest Destiny, or Christopher

Columbus's "discovery" of the Arnericas, or the British "civilizing" India, all modern development paradigms, capitalist as well as socialist, start with a model of an ideal world that is defined in materialist
terms. It assumes that all of the world are on the same path, with the white West leading the way and the
nonwhite Third World following. -rhe dominant paradigrn is by W. W. Rostow's book, TheStages of Economic
Growth. Although Rostow himlfwas far more cautious and understood subtleties, tho* who took his
rnantle basically reducd the countries Of the world and their wonomic history into stages of economic
"growing First you have infancy, the stage that a number of countries are said still to in. Then you develop
infrastructure to facilitate private capitalism and a concrntration Of productive As you continue to develop,
you move in a straight line until, finally, you're ready to "take onomically. I don't quite know where, but at
Sonw point, a country reaches the nirvana Of development. This is the basic formula, admittedly simplified
and that all so-called Third World countries are to follow. Have you ever what this "development nirvana"
wouki look like? How many McDonald's should it have? How many Nintendo ganrs household? How many
cable channels and tanning salons? I know I am facetious, but less so than you think. The fact remains that
the current developrnent rvadigrn simply tries to mimic (but not challenge) the wonomic, cultural, and
transformations that the Euro-bagd industrial societies went through, presumably toward similar ends.
Developrnent assistance, as currently is to help people do the they within rigid constraints .

It is
designa* to help Imple play the modem economic game, and to play it more
efficiently; it is not to reinvent the game or alter the balance of power. I want to
emphasize that the problern is not one of a lack of good inten- tion or good will. The sarxr kind of
arrogance and the same kind of uncon- sciously racist assumptions come from people whose individual
moral charac- ter is t*yond reproach. Letme illustrate. Consider Larry Summer, the fomEr chiefonomist of
the World Bank and now the Under Sretary of the U S. Treasury. A distinguished academician, Sumnrr
recognized that the West had a Evere pollution problem and a high Cost for health care. Following a logic
inherent in a economic worldview, Summer came up with a quite rational yet ethically alternative: the
West could export its toxic wastes to poor countries, where both life and land Were cheap. In summary,

multinational development organizations exhibit a cultural affinity toward a

Western, primarily Eurol*an, view of development. of color in ther organizations are largely
from affluent clasrs who have Ezen educated in Western or We-stem-influenced
institutions. Many of them have become psychologically distanced from the
histories and conditions of the popular struggles in their countries of origin.
They have gone through a process of socialization that has dulled their and
tempered their sense of urgency.

South Asian Conflict

Chinas tactical weaponizing of ethno-racial hierarchies
along the color line of antiblackness stands as the
informative logic for South Asian conflict its epidermal
demarcation of liberal subject from the darkened of
Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia is the precursor to
sovereign domination.
Shih 16 (Shu-mei Shih professor in the Department of Comparative
Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies
UCLA, Race and Relation: The Global Sixties in the South of the South
ERW)
Bandung was a pivotal moment that turned the lives of
Chinese minorities from bad to worse. While at Bandung, Chinese Premier Chou
En-lai affirmed that China had no desire to dominate her neighbors or spread
her influence through the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia (Lee 52) by
signing a treaty with the Indonesian government declaring that China would not try to influence how
the Chinese Question in Indonesia would be resolved. This treaty, along with similar kinds of
understanding with other Southeast Asian nations, presumably freed these nations from
fear of Chinas interference, yet, paradoxically, it also allowed them to act on their
fear of China by prosecuting Chinese minorities in their nation-states. For
As I have suggested,

example, the Tionghoa, besides being the target of race riots, were the target of dozens of discriminatory
laws and policies from the late 1950s all the way up to the end of the period of New Order (196698). In
1960, the only Indonesian writer who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature several times,
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, published The Chinese in Indonesia, a seminal book criticizing Indonesian state
racism against Chinese Indonesians, for which he had to pay the steep price of nine months in prison.

traces of Chineseness were banned

in Indonesia, including culture, language, and education (277). Indeed, it was not until
Under the New Order, according to Melani Budianti, all

the race riots of May 1998 and the subsequent overthrow of the Suharto government that the states racist
policies against the Tionghoa were formally abolished. Bandung has been considered the inaugural
moment for global racial brotherhood (Burton 352), but both the terms racial and brotherhood are
haunted Comparative Literature Published by Duke University Press COMPARATIVE LITERATURE / 150 3 This
was confirmed by multiple sources, according to the editorials of the special issue of TEMPO, a major
radical journal in Indonesia, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Bandung Conference (24). It also
appears that women who served on the hospitality committee were not allowed to refuse offering sexual
services when told to do so (62). not only by what happened in individual Southeast Asian states following
the Bandung conference, but also by revelations of what had transpired during the conference itself. The
host of the conference, as has been recently revealed, ran a hospitality committee consisting of beautiful
women, some of whom were already married, to offer, among other things, sexual services to the
delegates.3 The masculinist thrust of the conference is perhaps best embodied in the all-tooauthoritarian
states that the participant countries became: in the words of Samir Amin, Bandung regimes of one-party
states and authoritarian regimes that abused basic human rights and deprived workers and peasants of

Most of the countries involved, including India and Zanzibar,

practiced racial nationalisms in which social inequality was structured by
ethno-racial hierarchies (Burton 354; Burges 200). As Dipesh Chakravarty points out, despite

economic rights (Lee 1819).

the
Bandung Conference was also a setting where a developmentalist view of the
postcolonial world was taught and circulated what he calls the pedagogical style of
activating dialogues among decolonial thinkers (which he calls the dialogical side of decolonization),

developmental politics (4568). The nation that would soon experience the extreme casualties of
developmentalism in the Great Leap Forward, leading to thirty million famine-induced deaths, was none
other than China itself. By 2015, the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, the dialogical side of

AfroAsian
solidarity has become nothing but hollow rhetoric , confined to economic
principles of cooperation and competition. Consider , for example, the special issue
commemorating the conference 60 Years: Asia-African Conference published in 2015
by the radical Indonesian journal TEMPO, which intermittently has suffered government
censure in the past. While this special issue includes reminiscences about the conference,
decolonization has given way completely to developmental politics, in which Third World and

including a prominent reference to Richard Wright, as well as the expos of the sexual service scandal, its

The
editorials in the journal even taunt the Indonesian government for not
grabbing a sufficient enough share of the African market and promote an
industrial expansion into Africa (24). Rethinking our piety towards the global sixties has
major focus is Indonesias global economic presence, especially in competition with China.

recently spurred critical reflections on the Bandung Conference, such as Antoinette Burtons call for a new
history that would refuse all of Bandungs pieties and romances and break, finally, from its presumptively
fraternal narratives, if not its epistemological grasp (358). More specifically, it also means a rethinking of
the legacies of global Maoism. As a non-Stalinist and non-white Marxism, or Marxism with Chinese
characteristics, Maoism had been widely considered an answer to Western imperialism and capitalism for
Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Harding; Fiszman; Rothwell) at Paris 68 (Fields; Fejto; Bourg), and for
African and Asian Americans in the United States (Steven Lee; Hinderliter). But, as Yinghong Cheng notes,

the world revolution rhetoric of Maoism, which had at the time replaced whites with the
Chinese as leaders of colored people of the world, actually helped blind the
Chinese to their own racism (Cheng; Shih, Race and Revolution), and Arif Dirliks recent essay
summing up the meanings and implications of global Maoism concludes that there is little evidence of any
significant impact of Maoism on Third World revolutionary moments; that Chinas identification with the
Third World, because of its size and power, has not always been convincing; and that, in the end, major

Peru, Cambodia, India, and Turkey exemplified the degenerative

consequences of revolutionary goals in their acts of random violence and
terrorism (23435, 252). As I have shown throughout this essay, the perspectives situated
on the margins of the margins within the Global South vis--vis the lives of
ethnic minority peoples in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia register
strongly opposing positions that clamor for a further rethinking of the global sixties. These perspectives
Maoist groups in

starkly contrast the view of W.E.B. Du Bois, who went on a ten-week trip to China in 1959 and supplied an
African American perspective that is distinct from those of Smith and Wright and perhaps more typical. Du
Bois had written, as early as the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, that the awakening of the yellow
races is certain and that the awakening of the brown and black races will follow in time (34), and his trip
to China appeared to confirm this. China amazed and touched him like no other nation in the world; it
was a country where human nature is freed of its most hurtful and terrible and people are full of joy and
faith and marching on in a unison (190). Fifteen times I have crossed the Atlantic and once the Pacific,
he proclaims, and I have seen the world. But never so fast and glorious a miracle as China (195).
Expressing solidarity especially on the global racial line, Du Bois declares to his African American readers
back home: China

is flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood. China is colored

and knows to what a colored skin in this modern world subjects its owner
(199). The China Du Bois saw in 1959 was a China engulfed in revolutionary
euphoria. There was, however, also a different China, the China of the Great Leap Forward, the AntiRightist Campaign, and the Great Famine, all of which resulted in thousands of persecuted intellectuals and

The picture of global racial alliance that China purportedly

advocated was also not all that rosy. Chinas engagement with Africa as can

millions of corpses.

be seen by Chou En-lais no less than ten visits to various African countries between 1963 and 1964, the
Chinese support for the building of the Tanzanian-Zambian highway, and, since 1961, Chinese offerings of

was marred by Chinese racism against

Africans within China, especially on college campuses. The first wave of

scholarships to African students to study in China

African students in China was met with such violent racism that two-thirds of
them repatriated to Africa within the first year, and, throughout the 1970s and 1980s,
Chinese students rioted against African students across major cities of China, creating conditions
that witnesses and participants described as akin to apartheid, cultural rape, and
even pogrom (Shih, Race and Revolution). Du Boiss lack of awareness of what was going on in
China at the time reinforced a romantic racial internationalism also shared by such African American
figures as Langston Hughes, who had visited China in 1933 during an earlier era of black internationalism,

Despite all the best

intentions and professed solidarities, however, in the end it is crucial to take into account
Chinas sheer size and power, as well as its long history as the subject of
empire. To Southeast Asia, China has always been the Comparative Literature
Published by Duke University Press COMPARATIVE LITERATURE / 152 northern power. Within the
Third World or the Global South, then, there are further north-south differentiations,
whose racialized effects reached Chinese Southeast Asians in the form of
lootings, expulsions, rapes, and murders during the global sixties. The global sixties arc of
as well as Robert Williams, who spent four years in China in the 1960s.

histories and texts that I trace here, connecting France, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, and Malaysia, was
inflected by fissures within the resistance towards the racialized power of colonialism, as postcolonial

this arc
is also crucially modulated by Chinas deft appropriation of the global racial line
and its strategic Third-Worldization. The suppressed relationalities within the Global South,
nationalisms across Southeast Asia themselves took the form of racial nationalisms. Furthermore,

involving the internal colony in the United States represented by Smith, Wright, and Du Bois and the
postcolonies in Southeast Asia represented by Duong and Li, bubble up not only in Paris, Bandung, and
Beijing, but also in Saigon, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and Surabaya. Seen from such a relational perspective,

the North and the South suggest a differentially

inflected system of racialized power, which deeply fractured the global racial
line of black, brown, and yellow peoples throughout the glob al sixties.
the actual and symbolic geographies of

yesK Bataille

Engagement
The decision to engage with china exports a logic of utility
that forecloses the possibility of engaging in
heterogeneous aspects of china
Kulacki 2k [Gregory Kulacki is an expert on cross-cultural communication
between the United States and China. Since joining UCS in 2002, he has
promoted dialogue between experts from both countries on nuclear arms
control and space security and has consulted with Chinese and U.S.
governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the U.S. House
China Working Group, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the U.S.
National Academies, NASA, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Area Studies and Study Abroad The Chinese Experience//ASherm]
contact with China is a foray into the irrational
and the aesthetic, into what Georges Bataille called the heterogeneous; a realm
that resists integration with the Weberian rationalism that dominates the
consciousness of the modern West. Joseph Needham opened one of his later works on China
For many Western students and scholars,

with a discussion of how his wartime assignment in Chongqing sealed his fate, Gregory Kulacki 27 and
how after living in China it was impossible to think of doing anything else but a book on the history of
science, technology, and medicine in China (1954: 149). This followed an initial attraction to the Chinese
language that he described as being struck down by a blinding light, like Saint Paul on the way to
Damascus, with the feeling that I must learn this language with its marvelous script or else burst .

Needham surrendered a promising career in biochemistry to his emotional

encounter with China, to an aesthetic that was charged with an eroticism
Bataille would have expected. According to fellow Sinologist Simon Leys (1985), Needham once
told him that Chinese civilization presents the irresistible fascination of what is totally other, and only
what is totally other can inspire the deepest love, together with a strong desire to know it.1 Expressions of
love and desire for China appear frequently in the ruminations of Western scholars interested in the
Chinese past, but they are noticeably absent in the social scientific literature on modern China. Needham
self-consciously concludes his studies at precisely the same historical moment that Jonathan Spence
(1990) begins his Search for Modern China: the arrival of Jesuit missionaries during the late Ming Dynasty.
Hucker ends his introduction to Chinese history and culture in 1850, the year that he believes marks the
end of traditional or pre-modern Chinese civilization. Creel stands in the doorway of modern China,
surveys the intellectual terrain, and then retreats into what he sees as the contentment of traditional
Chinese political philosophy. He scorns the speedway of modern living, the saber-rattling, and the
aggressive and competitive tendencies of modern life, whose wreckage has to be patched up in the
psychiatrists office. Leys, who once said he loved China more than his own country, summed up the
disposition of the classicist toward contemporary China: Why the interest in contemporary China? I was
asked by one of my elders in Sinology, a scholar who I like and respect. I confess that his question
astounded me. Is there a Sinologist alive who does not feel in exile when he is away from China? Another
one, a dear friend, said to me, Your book Leys Habits neufs du President Mao was a pretty piece, but I
hope youll waste no more time with Chinese affairs. Leave that to the journalists, and come back to your

Leys
and many others with a passion for Chinas past feel compelled to ignore
such advice, they look upon contemporary Chinese culture as a burning
forest and see themselves, as Leys sees himself and his idols, as a flock of
wild doves trying in vain to save their beloved China with drops of water
carried on the tips of their tired wings. Such a powerful identification sets
classicists up as critics of a destructive present that defines for them the very
otherness that attracts them to China. In conceiving China as the antithesis of the West,
their lifes work becomes a mission to save China from disintegration into the
work on the classics. (1985: 1) 28 Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad While

modernity that defines their own culture. So it is that the love and attraction many Western
scholars hold for the Chinese past sometimes engenders feelings of bitterness toward contemporary China.

for students and scholars who

welcome modernity and do not seek to escape it with a retreat into antiquity, this bitterness
is sometimes diluted into a nostalgic regret over what needs to be sacrificed
if China is to finally become part of their inevitable, scientific, technological, predictable,
and rational world. This nostalgia must not impede the social scientific enterprise. Lucian Pye, a
For those who lack the classicists longing for return,

prolific author and the godfather of comparative political and psychological investigations of Chinese
culture, once lamented that: once one turns to the history of old China one is quickly swept into a
marvelous and fascinating world, which is so intrinsically interesting and exciting that the current China is
drab and insignificant by comparison. This tendency has been substantiated time and time again in recent
years in the careers of young scholars who set out to study what they believe to be the excitement of
Communist China only to be seduced by the alluring appeals of earlier times. (1968: vi) Pye (1991) wants
to help the Chinese outgrow what he calls the irrational and bizarre traditional political culture he
believes is frustrating Chinese efforts to join the modern world. He seems unabashedly annoyed by the
romanticism of scholars like Needham and Creel. In his view it distracts budding analysts from their
responsibility to resolve the pressing political crisis emerging from the clash between individual political
cultures and the world culture of modernization (Pye, 1990). studies boom, rely on this fear to sustain

For Bataille, fear,

like love, is an expression of the forces of affective life that break through
and split off into the heterogeneous those elements, like Chinas bizarre
culture, which threaten the steady continuation of modern rationalism s power
over human life. The social scientific specialist in Chinese culture shares the
classicists attraction to China as other. But because their attraction is born
from fear, they seek to liberate the Chinese people, and the world, from the
dangers the persistence of Chinas erratic culture (Pye 1991) creates for the culture
of modernization. In the introduction to his Anatomy of China, Dick Wilson expressed both the
fear of contemporary China and the social scientific will to tame it by
intellectually dissecting it. He believed scholars could employ their knowledge to force China,
that most resistant other, to live within the confines of Western rationalitys control: The outside
world is awed and frightened by the spectacle of a country that contains a
quarter of mankind flexing her muscles for the first time in centuriesyet
language, culture, religion, history, and political ideology combine to insure
that Americans and Europeans misunderstand China more profoundly than
they do any other part of the non-Western world. Indians and Japanese,
Africans and Arabs are all now to some extent incorporated within a Europeinitiated world system. Only China resists, but the forces of the contemporary
Chinese revolution can be made to yield to analysis and comprehension in
Western terms, and that is what this book attempts. (1968) Although written in the 1960s, Wilsons
remark would not be out of place today on the floor of the U.S. Congress as it debates
funding for cultural exchange with China or in a corporate-sponsored roundtable
for U.S. entrepreneurs in Beijing. The American publics fear of China, according to a recent
their interest in the pursuit of specialized knowledge about contemporary China.

Luce Foundation survey (Watts 1999), has trebled during the last two decades, despite what they call
the

historical American fascination with the worlds most populous nation.

The Chinese studies community must bear some responsibility for the
creation of this fear, which one would have expected to dissipate given the
increased numbers of Americans interacting with China and the waning of the
ideological battles waged as part of the Cold War.

Their engagement maintains the discontinuity of discrete

political agents which can interact without communication
Stephen S. Bush, Ph.D in religious studies, Assistant Professor at Brown, June
2011, The Ethics of Ecstasy. Journal of Religious Ethics. Vol. 39, Issue 2.
303-305. HHurt.
So we have a litany of consequential reasons to forego meditational practices
like Batailles. Nevertheless, whereas Hollywood acknowledges many of the
above concerns as risks and dangers, she seems to think that for the
most part they are not inevitable. Or perhaps, she suggests, if they are
inevitable, they are necessary (Hollywood 2002,109). How are we to make
sense of this? Hollywood finds two principal features of Batailles meditative
practice that recommend it as a vital ethical discipline, perhaps even as the
apex of the ethical and religious life (Hollywood 2002, 5). The first is the
possibility for a special form of communication to arise between the
meditator and other human beings. Communication, for Bataille, is a term
of art and does not referas it does in its ordinary senseto an exchange of
verbal or nonverbal messages among two or more people. Rather, it is
something that occurs specifically in ecstatic experiences when the
boundaries between self and other dissipate, revealing a fundamental bond
between the subject and the other. A fusion between the self and other
occurs. This condition is only realizable when the subject undergoes a severe
disruption of the sense of self, a psychic laceration. The image of severe
suffering, such as the photograph of a torture victim, effects self-laceration
and so occasions ecstasy, a state marked by the anguish of victimization and
self-abnegation and the joy of establishing communication with another.
Communication is generally not an engagement between two contemporary
and co-present subjects; rather, it occurs between individuals separated in
time and space who have both undergone the same sort of ecstatic
dissolution. Hollywood sees important ethical and political potential in the
compassion that results from achieving communication. She views Batailles
embrace of mysticism as a form of community-building and claims that
communication is necessary before more goal-directed political projects can
be usefully or meaningfully undertaken (Hollywood 2002, 62, 15).
To understand how this is so, we must turn to the second principal ethical
value that Hollywood finds in Batailles meditation, namely the meditators
refusal to incorporate the suffering individual into any religious or political
narrative. Earlier we registered this aspect of Batailles practice as a cause for
concern, but it turns out that it is of immense significance. A principal
criticism of Batailles meditation, as we saw, is that he wrests suffering
individuals out of the political, social, and historical contexts in which they
meet their victimization. Hollywood claims that such decontextualization is
necessary to encounter the individual in her or his specificity, without appeal
to the narratives that would strive to make sense of the individuals suffering.
Hollywood insists that it is not Bataille who instrumentalizes suffering
individuals, but those who incorporate the sufferings of others into their own

meaning-giving narratives, whether soteriological or political. In appropriating

the suffering that another has undergone into ones own attempt to make
sense of the universe or to direct political action, one subordinates the victim
to ones own aims and agendas. According to Hollywood, the communication
that Bataille establishes with the victim is oriented toward the individual, in
his or her specificity, but also takes the individual as a representative of
suffering humanity in general (Hollywood2002, 90, see also 82). By
abstracting the suffering individual out of history, one acknowledges the
element in trauma that defies articulation even as one connects to those who
have suffered throughout history. Hollywood contrasts Bataille with the
medievals on this point, because however much his practice resembles
theirs, it is a crucial difference that Christs suffering is an episode in a larger
narrative of salvific redemption, whereas Batailles victim is removed from all
redemptive narratives.
Hollywood says that Batailles demand for radical communication, a
communication that precludes sense-conferring narrativization, may also be
a necessary contestation of more immediately useful political projects
(Hollywood 2002, 84). Indeed, Bataillean communication is apolitical action in
that it contests those who would subsume human suffering to their own
vision of politics:
We should distinguish between two conceptions of political action: one that
would contest power and injustice through narrativization, and one that
would contest those very narrativizations themselves in the name of that
which is unassimilable to redemptive political projectsthe bodies of those
who can never again be made whole [Hollywood2002, 84]
It is important to note that it is not so much that Hollywood is in principle
opposed to the narrativization of suffering. She allows that one may
eventually narrativize suffering for the sake of political action. Her point is to
insist, first, that there is some element of traumatic suffering that a meaningconferring narrative cannot encapsulate and, second, that prior to the
political or religious appropriation of victimization, a moment must occur in
which one encounters the victims suffering in all its bare particularity. That
moment, Bataillean communication, may very well be a necessary
precondition for legitimate political action, Hollywood suggests.

Fear of Death
The fear of ones death justifies massive levels of violence
and devalues existence
Winnubst 6 [Shannon Winnubst, Queering Freedom, Indiana University
Press]
servility to utility is displayed particularly in the temporality of
such a worldthe temporality of anticipation. Returning again to the role of the tool , he
writes, In efficacious activity man becomes the equivalent of a tool , which produces;
he is like the thing the tool is, being itself a product. The implication of these facts is quite clear: the
tools meaning is given by the future, in what the tool will produce, in the
future utilization of the product: like the tool, he who serveswho workshas
the value of that which will be later, not of that which is. (198891, 2:218) The
reduction of our lives to the order of utility forces us to project ourselves
endlessly into the future. Bataille writes of this as our anguished state, caused by this anticipation
For Bataille, the

that must be called anticipation of oneself. For he must apprehend himself in the future, through the

advanced capitalism and

phallicized whiteness must ground themselves in a denial of death: death
precludes the arrival of this future. It cuts us off from ourselves, severing us from the future
self that is always our real and true self. Resisting the existential turn, however, Bataille
refuses to read this denial of death as an ontological condition of humanity.
For Bataille, this is a historical and economic denial, one in which only a culture grounded in the
anticipation of the future must participate. He frames it primarily as a problem of the intellect. In the
reduction of the world to the order of utility, we have reduced our lives and
experiences to the order of instrumental reason. This order necessarily operates in a
anticipated results of his action (198891, 2:218). This is why

sequential temporality, facing forward toward the time when the results will be achieved, the questions
solved, the theorems provedand also when political domination will be ended and ethical anguish
quieted. As Bataille credits Hegel for seeing, knowledge is never given to us except by unfolding in time
(198891, 2:202). It never appears to us except, finally, as the result of a calculated effort, an operation
useful to some end (198891, 2:202)and its utility, as we have seen, only drives it forward toward some

There are always new and future objects of thought to

conquer and domesticate. Within this order of reason, death presents the cessation of
the very practice of knowledge itself. Severing us from the future objects of
thought and from our future selves, death prevents man from attaining himself (198891,
future utility, endlessly.

2:218). As Bataille explains, the fear of death appears linked from the start to the projection of oneself

The fear
of death derives from the subordination to the order of utility and its
dominant form of the intellect, instrumental reason. While death is
unarguably a part of the human condition , for Bataille the fear of death is a
historically habituated response, one that grounds cultures of advanced
capitalism and phallicized whiteness. In those frames of late modernity, death
introduces an ontological scarcity into the very human condition: it
represents finitude, the ultimate limit . We must distance ourselves from such threats, and we
into a future time, which [is] an effect of the positing of oneself as a thing (198891, 2:218).

do so most often by projecting them onto sexualized, racialized, and classed bodies. But for Bataille,

To die
humanly, he argues, is to accept the subordination of the thing (198891, 2:219),
which places us in the schema that separates our present self from the
future, desired, anticipated self: to die humanly is to have of the future
servility to the order of knowledge is as unnecessary as servility to the order of utility.

being, of the one who matters most in our eyes, the senseless idea that he is
not (198891, 2:219). But if we are not trapped in the endless anticipation of our future self as the index
of meaning in our lives, we may not be anguished by this cessation: If we live sovereignly, the
representation of death is impossible, for the present is not subject to the
demands of the future (198891, 2:219). To live sovereignly is not to escape death, which is
ontologically impossible. But it is to refuse the fear, and subsequent attempts at disavowal, of death as the

Rather than trying to transgress this ultimate

limit and prohibition, the sovereign man cannot die fleeing. He cannot let
the threat of death deliver him over to the horror of a desperate yet
impossible flight (198891, 2:219). Living in a temporal mode in which anticipation would dissolve
ontological condition that defines humanity.

into NOTHING(198891,2: 208), the sovereign man lives and dies like an animal (198891, 2:219). He
lives and dies without the anxiety invoked by the forever unknown and forever encroaching anticipation of
the future. As Bataille encourages us elsewhere, Think of the voracity of animals, as against the
composure of a cook (198891, 2:83).

yesCounterplan

1nc CP Reform Existing MDBs & Ratify TPP

The United States should:
Not oppose Chinas organizational initiatives or try to
block other countries from participating in them
Ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership
In coordination with Japan, expand the voting power of China and other
emerging powers, without conditions, in regional and global financial
institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the Wor

ld Bank and the Asian Development Bank and seek a

new capital increase for the ADB.
CP boosts U.S. strategic influence globally and ensures
the AIIB doesnt eclipse existing international financial
institutions and spur a new network of regional
development banks
Morris, 15 --- senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and
director of the Rethinking US Development Policy initiative (3/20/15, Scott,
No, the US Will Not Join the AIIB But Heres One Thing It Can Do,
http://www.cgdev.org/blog/no-us-will-not-join-aiib--heres-one-thing-it-can-do,
article downloaded 6/6/15, JMP)
The backlash to the discordant US position on the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB) this week was swift and seemingly universal. So much
so that I cant find any voices defending the US view to link to here. Fair
enough. As Ive already argued (here and here), the criticism is deserved.
But I part ways with one emerging narrative about how the US can get back
on track. I dont agree that the US should join the very institution that it has
so strongly called on others to avoid. Even if the will were there from the
Obama administration (and it is decidedly not), the path to membership
would be nearly impossible. President Obama couldnt sign the United States
up for AIIB membership for the same reason he cant offer US approval for
the IMF reform package (something he does want). Namely, the US
Congress. Capitol Hill would need to authorize and pay for US participation in
the new institution. That will not happen. Earlier this week Treasury Secretary
Jack Lew reiterated the Administrations urging for IMF reform in
Congressional testimony (play video from 19.17 23.38).
Yet a better and more feasible option is already at hand .
Theres a higher likelihood that the Obama administration could work with
Congress on a set of measures to increase the attractiveness of the World

Bank and Asian Development Bank in the eyes of the very countries that are
now looking fondly toward the AIIB.
The US objective at this point will be to ensure that the AIIB does not grow
quickly to eclipse the existing international financial institutions (IFIs), or that
the AIIB does not otherwise become the launching point for an alternative
network of regional development banks, all of them excluding the United
States. The best way to do that is to realize more of the pent up ambition for
the new institutions through the existing ones. That means one thing: money.
The United States, and particularly the US Congress, cant expect to lead
in institutions like the World Bank if it isnt willing to pony up more resources.
This means demonstrating a newfound ambition when it comes to more
capital for the World Bank and the regional development banks in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America. Much of the US talk in these banks in recent years is
around doing more with less, leveraging more, and relying more on private
money. In the meantime, many of the World Banks leading shareholders
(China, the UK, France, Germany) are now demonstrating that they are
perfectly willing to put more of their public resources through multilateral
channels.
The United States can demonstrate renewed leadership by channeling some
of this ambition from other countries into the existing IFIs. Why not announce
support for a doubling of World Bank capital? That may sound prohibitively
expensive, but the budgetary implications are actually very modest,
representing about one percent of the annual US foreign assistance budget.
Is that too costly an investment to shore up US strategic influence globally at
a time when it appears to be in peril?

1nc Fragmentation Net Benefit

The counterplan is necessary to reverse fragmentation
from China lead initiatives --- impact is diminished U.S.
leadership and U.S. backed institutions and declining
regional stability and global governance.
Frost, 14 --- Senior Advisor at the East-West Centers Washington, D.C.,
office and a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense
Universitys Institute for National Strategic Studies (December, Ellen L, Rival
Regionalisms and Regional Order: A Slow Crisis of Legitimacy,
http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/free/021115/SR48.pdf,
article downloaded 6/5/16, JMP)
Conclusions: Restoring Legitimacy and Direction to Asias Regional Institutions
The world is not yet witnessing the end of a stable Pacific, to quote Robert Kaplans dramatic prediction.53 No matter how their structure is
designed or how many economies they encompass, regional institutions that exclude the United States will not replace U.S. power as a key
organizing force. No other government can bring such massive resources to the table.

The real problem is not U.S. weakness, but a slow crisis of legitimacy that
diminishes the perceived value of both U.S. leadership and U.S.-backed
institutions . The erosion of regional order in Asia threatens both the future
stability of the region and global governance. Both China and the U nited S tates
attach great value to regional stability, but they are on different paths.
The trend toward fragmentation and rival regionalisms calls for overcoming
organizational stovepipes and launching serious strategic thinking and
action on the part of the president and his White House aides, leading
policymakers in executive branch departments and agencies, and
congressional leaders. Unfortunately, top foreign policymakers in Washington are currently hobbled by budgetary
constraints and congressional roadblocks and distracted by crises in the Middle East, Ukraine, and West Africa (Ebola). Except for China, Asia is
on hold. In addition, domestic political action during much of 2015 and 2016 will be consumed by the November 2016 presidential election.
Asian friends of the United States know that these swings in the United States reputation and leadership come and go. (Recall, for example,

steps should be taken now

to stem the emerging fragmentation of regional and global order and put U.S.
influence on sounder footing.
the hand-wringing accompanying Japans economic rise in the 1980s.) They are right, but

The Obama administration has made some important moves, and President Obamas personal interest in Southeast Asia and willingness to
travel there have helped re-establish the United States as an active and constructive player. But that is not enough. Stalled trade legislation,
sluggish growth in most Western economies, Chinas mixed behavior in the region, U.S. political dysfunction, and the difficulty of winding down
U.S. military engagement in the Middle East call for U.S. action on several fronts.
Revive and Reform Global Institutions While Making Way for New Ones

There are legitimate reasons why rival regionalisms have emerged. It is both
ridiculous and shameful that developing countries remain underrepresented
in existing regional and global institutions such as the IMF and the ADB. The
major powers governing such institutions should adopt institutional
arrangements that rectify this imbalance and adopt voting reforms without
conditions. The White House should make the case for reforming both the
IMF and the ADB along these lines in broad strategic terms.

The resurgence of Chinas political and economic influence in Asia is a fact of

life. The U nited S tates should not automatically oppose Chinas effort to create
new organizations, particularly the AIIB . Nor should it try to persuade likeminded allies and partners to stay on the sidelines. They have their own concerns that are similar to
Washingtons. Instead, U.S. officials should continue to ask questions about governance
and adopt a wait-and-see approach . In the case of the AIIB, for instance, it is appropriate to question whether
the AIIB will conduct high-quality project evaluation, practice open procurement, take into account environmental and social concerns, recruit
staff on the basis of merit, submit to thorough auditing, adopt safeguards against corruption and fraud, and adhere to transparent policies and
procedures.54
Act Like a Leader
Domestic political dysfunction inflicts a high cost on U.S. foreign policy and national security. The failure thus far to ratify UNCLOS strikes other

inaction on IMF reform

contributed directly to the emergence of rival regionalisms. The absence of
trade promotion authority damages not only the credibility of U.S. negotiators
in the TPP negotiations but also U.S. leadership more generally. Top-level
administration officials must appeal to a broader congressional audience by
going beyond issue-specific, conventional arguments and instead making the
case for ratification of UNCLOS and the TPP and passage of TPA on broad
strategic grounds.
countries as senseless and hypocritical, especially since the U.S. Navy claims to observe it. Likewise,
has

Executive branch officials, especially the president, must also do a better job of explaining what the rebalancing strategy means and why
allocating more budgetary resources and nonmilitary personnel to the Asia-Pacific makes sense, even at a time when parts of the Middle East

Asian leaders will only believe in the U.S. rebalancing strategy

when they see it in action. But resources remain limited, and the policy
toolbox is still heavily weighted toward military hardware and joint military
exercises. American men and women in uniform vastly outnumber civilian officials. One goal of the rebalancing strategy is to reduce
are again in flames.

this huge gap and bolster the United States political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic presence. The administration must fight more actively
and at a higher level to obtain congressional approval for the necessary resourcesand resist calls to divert them to the Middle East. Only the
president can decide on such trade-offs.

The U nited S tates may not be able or willing to fund major physical infrastructure projects comparable to those funded by China and,
presumably, by the new AIIB, but it can do more to build up Asias soft infrastructure. One
example is expanded English-language instruction, which would have a direct
economic effect in poorer ASEAN countries. Although more people are learning Mandarin, English is still the
language of not only international business but also science and technology. Further expansion of visiting fellowships for students and young
professionals is another relatively low-cost way of restoring the United States image as a generous leader. Good will is a strategic asset.
Reinvigorate APECs Vision
The United States should take advantage of upcoming and future APEC summits to restore APECs role as an incubator of big ideas.55
Following former president Clintons example, the U.S. president and his or her top lieutenants should recommit the United States to an FTAAP
and express appreciation for Chinas support of this initiative. He or she should explain to American audiences why this goal makes sense and
where the TPP fits in this vision. Corresponding measures to improve employment prospects at home should be a core part of this strategy.
U.S. officials should not appear to be blocking Chinas effort to promote an FTAAP, because doing so feeds Chinese perceptions that the United
States wants to contain China. They are correct, however, that near-term conclusion of the TPP should take priority. At the 2014 APEC headsof-state meeting in Beijing, the United States warded off a feasibility study of the FTAAP, which would formally set the FTAAP in motion, and
accepted the establishment of a strategic study as a face-saving concession to Beijing. Carrying out the study groups mandate will be a lowprofile, time-consuming job for trade experts. More months will pass as APEC member governments study the results and discuss them with
affected interest groups. Top-level leaders will not be involved for at least several years.
Build on Shared Strategic Interests and Continue to Contribute to Public Goods
The postwar history of U.S.-led regional institutions underscores the importance of shared strategic purpose. During the Cold War, opposition
to the spread of Communism was the glue holding U.S.-led regional institutions together; when top-priority strategies diverged, the
organizations lost their unifying purpose.
In todays Asia, all governments see constructive, mutually beneficial U.S.-China relations as a necessary foundation of stability and growth.
But beyond those basics, strategic interests differ. U.S. leadership is most effective when Washington avoids dueling with China or imposing a
grand strategy on the governments of the region and instead assigns equipment and personnel to noncontroversial, relatively nonpolitical
areas such as health and maritime safety. Progress in these fields is as important to the United States as to Asia and should be pursued even if
allies and partners engage in free riding (which most of them probably will).

Beijing gets credit from other governments for not telling them what they
should do, but the flip side of that stance is that no one knows what Chinas
ultimate goals in the region are. What goes on in regional institutions, new or
old, conforms to this pattern. There are strong reasons to believe that China
seeks to establish itself as the dominant power in Asia while diminishing the
role of the U nited S tates as an external balancer . But how and toward what end does it hope to achieve this
outcome? How far will the United States go to accommodate a stronger China? The answers to these questions will have enormous bearing on
the norms, composition, tasks, and future achievements of regional institutions.

CP helps preserve the Bretton Woods system and

improves Chinas role in the existing international order
Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.
Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
Finally, the United States and its allies should take seriously Chinas
complaint that its role in international financial institutions is
incommensurate with its wealth. The United States cannot be surprised that
China, India and other emerging economies want to create new institutions,
when the incumbent institutions have not shifted to reflect the new global
distribution of wealth. If the United States wants China to be a responsible
stakeholder within the existing order and not create new institutions, it has to
give China an appropriate stake in the existing order. While the domestic and
international politics of reallocating shares in international financial
institutions are complicated, if the United States wants the Bretton Woods
system to endure, it has to exert political capital to ensure that the system
evolves with the global economy .

2nc Solvency
The counterplan solves --- creates a development dtente
with China without allowing the AIIB to eclipse the ADB.
Other countries can serve as proxies for U.S. views within
the bank.
Morris, 15 --- Senior Fellow, Director of Rethinking US Development Policy
at Center for Global Development (1/19/15, Scott, How China and the United
States Can Come To Terms on the AIIB,
http://www.boaoreview.com/Opinions/Finance/20150119/483.html,
downloaded 4/23/16, JMP)
With two major announcements on trade and climate at Novembers APEC
meetings, the United States and China have leaped into a highly productive
bilateral relationship in the economic sphere. Given this, its striking then to
hear the discordant tone struck around the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB). In recent months, the White House has made clear its
displeasure about the AIIB and Asian countries that would seek to join the
Chinese in this new institution.
Jostling for strategic influence
If both countries can find common ground on politically sensitive climate and
trade issues, why would the question of how the US and China choose to
support development in othercountries be such a lightening rod? The
confrontational stance becomes clearer when we recognize that institutions
like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), and now the AIIB, play
multiple roles. Yes, they are critical, sometimes indispensable, sources of
financing and know-how for a diverse and large number of developing
countries. But for this very reason, they are also critical sources of strategic
influence for the countries who exercise control over them as their largest
shareholders. For the World Bank and to a lesser degree the ADB, that means
the United States, and for the AIIB, that will mean China.
Hence the alarm coming from the US as China moves quickly to establish a
new multilateral development bank (MDB) and attracts much of the region,
including key US allies, to join. US officials have taken to the press and
diplomatic channels to cast a skeptical tone toward the AIIB and try to
dissuade other countries from participating in the new institution.
But if the worlds two largest economies can come to terms on trade and
climate, then surely they can find common ground on the MDBs . To do so will
require some concessions from both countries. The good news is that a deal
here would not just benefit the US and China. In fact, the biggest
beneficiaries of a development dtente would be the regions poor, as more

financing would be unlocked for pro-growth investments in Asias developing

economies.
Concessions the US should make
For the United States, the first step is to back off its AIIB opposition. Yes, the
Australians may have been temporarily persuaded to decline Chinas
invitation as a result of US diplomatic efforts, but for the longer term, this is a
losing strategy since it amounts to telling countries not to do what they view
is in their best interests.
And with little likelihood that the United States itself would ever become a
member of the AIIB legislative procedures alone make it prohibitive it is all
the more useful for the Americans to have like-minded countries as AIIB
shareholders who can serve as effective proxies for US views within the
institution .
But the real opportunity for a constructive policy shift from the United States
comes in regards to the ADB, not the AIIB. After all, if the US wants to
maintain regional influence through a multilateral institution, then it ought to
focus on the regional development bank where it already has influence. To
put it bluntly, the US strategic aim should be to ensure that the AIIB does not
eclipse the ADB. This is something that cannot be achieved by criticizing the
AIIB, but rather by making the ADB as attractive and robust in the region as
possible .
Even better, a pro-ADB strategy is something the Chinese will likely embrace .
They have demonstrated through their own engagement with the bank that
the regional choice does not need to be ADB or AIIB. It can and should be
both.
So what would make for a more attractive ADB? Perhaps more than anything
else, more capital.
Fortunately, the United States will have an opportunity over the next few
years to lead a capital-raising effort at no new cost to US taxpayers. The US
stands to save about $60 million a year as a donor to the ADBs grantmaking activities as a result of the banks pending financial reforms. Rather
than pocketing that money, why not put it to use as new paid in capital in
the bank? Combined with other countries contributions to a capital increase
and the leverage of the ADBs own borrowing, that $60 million could boost
the banks infrastructure investment capacity by about $5 billion annually in
just five years.
The United States could also ease tensions with the Chinese by dropping the
wrongheaded drive to kick China out of the ADBs club of borrowers. The
banks lending to China actually delivers financial stability to the institution
and serves as a useful market test of the ADBs products and services. After

all, China, more than any other country in the region, has options when it
comes to development finance. The banks efforts to remain attractive to the
Chinese, particularly when it comes to technical assistance and knowledge
products, is a useful discipline and motivator for the institution that ultimately
benefits all ADB borrowers.
Constructive measures China could adopt
While the United States has some work to do at the ADB, China in turn could
move quickly to make a number of constructive overtures at the AIIB. These
actions are less about making concessions to the US, and more about
demonstrating a desire to have the AIIB operate as a peer within the existing
MDB system, adopting key principles, norms, and values that are firmly
established at the World Bank and ADB.
First, Chinas advertised 50 percent shareholding is far too much for any one
country in a multilateral institution. The US is widely characterized as
dominating the World Bank, yet its shareholding there is just over 15 percent.
China and other emerging market countries have been rightly frustrated by
the slow pace of shareholding reform at the IMF and World Bank, but Chinas
shareholding stance at the AIIB undercuts its principled arguments on
governance at the other institutions.
Second, China could make a clear commitment to debt sustainability in the
AIIBs lending practices. Specifically, by signing on to the IMF-World Bank
debt sustainability framework, the AIIB would demonstrate its willingness to
operate within international principles aimed at preventing unsustainable
debt in developing countries. And when debt problems occur, there should be
no doubt about the AIIBs intention to work constructively alongside other
multilateral and bilateral creditors toward resolutions.
Third, China could make straightforward commitments to universal and
transparent procurement rules without adopting a line-by-line version of
existing MDB rules. After all, the World Banks own procurement standards
are in the midst of an overhaul, so the AIIB has no fixed target even if it
wanted to adopt all of the existing rules. But a commitment to universal
procurement would set a good tone by demonstrating that the AIIB is not
intended to be an exclusive club for member countries commercial interests.
Fourth, other areas of operational standards and safeguards are more
challenging, and the Chinese would do well to avoid a wholesale adoption of
existing MDB rules, even as they take steps to demonstrate a firm
commitment to underlying principles. Like procurement, rules related to
environmental and social standards are under active review at the existing
MDBs, where more regulation over the years has too often been falsely
equated with more effective standards.
Starting with a clean slate, the AIIB has the opportunity to explore a new path
for these standards. The new institution will be facing skeptics in the West

when it comes to social and environmental issues, so the Chinese would do

well to demonstrate a serious approach early on.
There are a number of areas where the AIIB could usefully depart from the
norms of the existing MDBs entirely. For example, would the Bretton Woods
architects have so quickly established resident boards of directors, with
annual costs in the tens of millions of dollars, in an era of instantaneous
global communications?
Chinese officials have already made broad brush commitments to align the
AIIB with existing MDB practices and standards. The difficult work of
translating those commitments into detailed policies remains ahead. A key
demonstration of good faith will be active consultation and engagement with
the ADB and World Bank as policies are developed.
With a development dtente, the United States and China can add a third
major outcome to their recent string of bilateral successes. Much like the
climate agreement, coming to terms on the AIIB and ADB is not just about
what is good for the US and China. Its ultimately about how these two actors,
working through multilateral institutions, can better serve the development
aims of the global community.

No solvency deficits --- U.S. can use its allies to shape the
bank
Acharya, 15 --- professor of international relations at American University
(6/19/15, Amitav, No need to fear the AIIB: Rather than ushering in a
Chinese Asian fiefdom, the new investment bank puts China under intense
pressure to deliver. And success requires abandoning its territorial claims,
http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/no-need-to-fear-the-aiib, article
downloaded on 6/11/16, JMP)
The Obama administration's negative response towards the AIIB has been
widely criticised, but it's not hard to understand. First, the United States'
response is not new and while this may surprise many, it is not necessarily
motivated by its concerns about China's rise.
The George H.W. Bush administration rejected the Malaysian proposal for an
East Asian Economic Grouping (which was renamed the East Asian Economic
Caucus) in the early 1990s, which would have been led by Japan. The Clinton
administration killed Japan's Asian Monetary Fund proposal in the wake of the
Asian financial crisis in 1997.
The participation of America's European allies, as well as Australia, in the AIIB
creates the possibility of them playing the role of "good cop" to Washington's
"bad cop". There is no doubt that Washington will encourage its allies to use
their participation in these new forums to ensure their transparency,
accountability and openness.

The CP allows the U.S. to forge a pro-development

partnership with China and ensures that the U.S. retains
the lead among competing development banks
Morris, 15 --- senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and
director of the Rethinking US Development Policy initiative (6/3/15, Scott,
When It Comes to the AIIB, US Focus Should Be the MDBs, Not the IMF,
http://www.cgdev.org/blog/when-it-comes-aiib-us-focus-should-be-mdbs-notimf, article downloaded 6/6/16, JMP)
The US failure to approve governance reforms at the IMF is what led China to
create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Ben Bernanke is the latest
prominent voice to employ this narrative. With China as the primary
beneficiary of reforms that would have shifted voting power from Europe
toward emerging-market countries within the IMF, the failure of the US
Congress to act motivated the Chinese and 56 other countries to do
something. And that something is the AIIB.
As much as this storyline might be useful in prodding the US Congress to do
the right thing on IMF reform, it is also almost certainly wrong. And wrong in
ways that matter.
The basic problem with the AIIB is about the IMF narrative is that the IMF is
not a development bank. The AIIB will do what the World Bank and Asian
Development Bank do, which is not what the IMF does. China did not choose
to lead a multilateral effort to create a rival to the IMF. Rather, it created the
AIIB for a specific purpose: to expand the pool of multilateral capital available
for infrastructure investments in the developing world.
Ok, but what about Chinas frustration over the governance of institutions like
the IMF and World Bank? Here, its important not to lump the two Bretton
Woods institutions together. In fact, the governance reforms that have stalled
at the IMF because of congressional inaction were actually approved for the
World Bank by Congress in 2012. As a result, China is now the third largest
shareholder in the bank (behind the United States and Japan) and remains
one of the institutions largest borrowers. This position as large shareholder
and borrower arguably gives the country a unique degree of influence within
the institution in ways that belie claims that China is deeply frustrated by its
standing in the World Bank.
Yet, where Bernanke and others might be wrong in attributing the AIIB
directly to IMF governance reform, they are right in focusing on the role of the
United States. By all means, the US Congress should act on IMF reform for all
of the reasons that have been exhaustively detailed during the five years
since the IMF deal was struck.
But if the United States wants to respond directly to the rise of the AIIB, then
the Obama administration and Congress will need to shift their focus. Yes,

further progress on World Bank governance reform will be helpful and

necessary in the years ahead, but the United States has less to give here
than do key European countries.
Instead, what the United States can provide through existing multilateral
development banks (MDBs) such as the World Bank and Asian Development
Bank is the same thing the Chinese are now providing through the AIIB: more
capital for infrastructure spending. This is hardly a secret. China and other
emerging-market countries have been calling for more capital at the World
Bank and ADB for years , and the US-supported capital increases of 2010
have not kept pace with the demand for infrastructure spending.
Unfortunately, the United States has been the voice of opposition when it
comes to calls for more MDB capital. But if the United States wants to limit
the ambitions of emergent development institutions like the AIIB where US
influence is limited, then it has to demonstrate greater ambition in the
existing MDBs . The United States can choose to forge a pro-development
partnership with China through the MDBs (old and new), or it can continue to
stand on the sidelines as China pursues new partnerships elsewhere .
Congress could pass IMF reform tomorrow, and the United States would still
be facing this critical choice in the world of the MDBs.

2nc Solves China Rise

The CP solves Chinas rise --- reverses perception of
containment
Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.
Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
U.S. officials have, for years, called upon China to act as a responsible
stakeholder,8 a country that, in then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert
Zoellicks words, [recognizes] that the international system sustains their
peaceful prosperity, so they work to sustain that system. However, the
United States has not been as sensitive when it comes to multilateral
political and economic institution building . Instead, Washington has, at times,
seemed content to permit the emergence of rival regionalisms.9 Rather
than welcome a greater Chinese role in regional institutions, challenging
Beijing to act as a responsible stakeholder, the United States has seemed, at
best, resigned and, at worst, hostile to Chinas efforts to create its own
institutions outside the existing regional architecture. While China has its own
reasons for wanting to build new regional institutions, Washington has failed
to use multilateral organizations as a means to give China a greater stake in
the existing order and to counter the argument that the United States seeks
to contain or otherwise limit Chinas power in Asia .

CP demonstrates support for Chinas growing power

Dr. Kawai, 15 --- Professor at the University of Tokyos Graduate School of
Public Policy (last modified on 8/7/2015, Masahiro Kawai, ASIAN
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE
STAKEHOLDER?, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Evolving
International Financial Order, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
(2) Dissatisfaction with the Existing Institutions and Willingness to Lead
The economic and financial power of China and other major emerging
countries has grown rapidly, but their voice in existing international financial
institutions has not kept pace. These countries generally view the existing
institutions, including IMF, the World Bank and ADB, as dominated by the
U.S.-led G7 countries and unwilling to make necessary reforms to reflect the
increased economic clout of emerging nations . Even though developing
countries could contribute more capital to these institutions and thereby

attempt to raise their voting powers, they believe developed country

members seeking to maintain their influence would block such actions.
A good example is the case of the IMF quota and governance reform package,
which was approved in December 2010 by the Funds board of governors, the
highest decision-making body of the institution. The package called for:
Doubling IMF quotas, the institutions principal source of financial resources,
from SDR 238.4 billion to SDR 476.8 billion (about $755.7 billion);8
Shifting more than six percentage points in quota share from developed
countries and some oil producing countries to dynamic emerging and
developing countries;9
Shifting two seats on the IMF board of executive directors from advanced
European countries to emerging countries to reflect the proposed change in
quotas.
The reform would have made China the third largest IMF shareholder after the
United States and Japan, and allowed three of the other BRICS countries
Brazil, Russia and India to become top-10 shareholders. At the same time,
the voices and voting shares of the poorest countries would have been
maintained.
Ratification of the package, however, requires an 85% majority vote of the
board of governors. Since the United States holds 17% of those votes and the
U.S. Congress has not approved the IMF package, the United States has
effectively prevented the reforms from going into effect for five years.
China and other emerging economies have come to believe that the United
States opposes the IMF reforms in order to retain Washingtons dominant
position, while simultaneously constraining a rise in Chinas influence over
the institution. Indeed, China seems to have concluded that any reform of
the existing institutions that would allow it a larger voice will be difficult, due
to U.S intransigence .
The United States and developed European countries play dominant roles at
IMF and the World Bank, while Japan takes the lead at ADB with U.S. support.
Japans voting share in ADB is more than twice that of Chinas, and a
Japanese national has always headed the bank. China has no such influence
at an existing international financial institution, despite the countrys status
as the worlds second largest economic power, ahead of Japan and second
only to the United States. That disparity and the effective veto wielded by
the United States to correct it seem to have contributed significantly to
Chinas decision to create a new bank that would allow Beijing to lead in
Asias economic development through infrastructure investment .

2nc Solves Asia Rebalance / U.S. Leadership

CP demonstrates U.S. leadership in Asia solves
rebalance
Harris, 15 --- Economy, Trade, and Business Fellow at Sasakawa Peace
Foundation USA (last modified on 8/7/2015, Tobias, ASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER?, The U.S.
Response to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
However, even if AIIB develops into a high-quality international financial
institution that complements existing institutions, by focusing solely on the
banks technical aspects the Obama administration missed an opportunity to
advance the U.S. strategic position in Asia. The United States would have
looked more serious and engaged in the region if the Obama administration
had met the challenge posed by AIIB by outlining new initiatives to tackle the
infrastructure gap or by reforming ADB and other development institutions
by granting greater stakes to China and Asias other emerging economies . Its
actions would have lived up to the vision, outlined in the rebalance strategy,
of U.S. leadership committed to solving regional problems. Instead, the U.S.
government conveyed the impression that it is more interested in having the
United States and its allies take the lead in writing rules for Asia in the
twenty-first century than in solving widely recognized problems. President
Obama reinforced this impression when making the case for the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) in his 2015 State of the Union address, when he said, But
as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the worlds fastest-growing
region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage.
Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules.18

2nc Solves U.S. Leadership

Ratifying TPP is the best way to correct errors of initial
U.S. response to the AIIB and demonstrate leadership --AIIB could undermine good governance that is key to
economic growth
Chovanec, 15 --- Managing Director, Silvercrest Asset Management
(3/26/15, Patrick, Washingtons Big China Screw-up; U.S. efforts to oppose a
$50 billion China-led infrastructure bank have backfired. Experts explain
why, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/26/washingtons-big-china-screw-upaiib-asia-infrastructure-investment-bank-china-containment-chinafile/, article
downloaded 6/9/16, JMP)
Many of the concerns the U.S. has with Chinas AIIB are valid. The problem
with developing much-needed infrastructure in Asia is not moneythe world
is floating in money right nowbut selecting and managing projects in way
that will deliver the desired results. Given the track record of development
lending by Chinas existing policy banks (the China Ex-Im Bank and China
Development Bank), at best the AIIB risks being merely a vehicle to buy
business for Chinese companies and absorb Chinas huge overcapacity . At
worst, it threatens to undermine the good governance that is key to the
regions genuine economic development . Many of the U.S. allies who broke
ranks to join the bank appearlike the U.K., eager to win Chinas blessing
as an offshore RMB trading hubto have done so for deeply misguided and
even delusional reasons.
All that said, its hard to think of a more ham-fisted and ineffectual way to
deal with these concerns than the United States employed. It was a classic
case of you cant beat something with nothing. The Chinese have
accumulated a large pool of savings, and to pretend that Chinese capital
wont play a role in the global economywith or without U.S. permissionis
simply untenable. Issuing a blanket no to Chinese capital, rather than
offering constructive ideas or alternatives, was never going to fly. Strongarming allies isnt going to work if it looks like China has a plan, and the U.S.
is just a carping bystander.
The AIIB potentially has flaws. One of two things will happen: either those
flaws will become evident, or China will find a way (perhaps working with
other member countries) to overcome them. Either way, China has taken the
lead and whining about it isnt a convincing argument.
If the U.S. wants to lead, then lead. Making progressand a real commitment
to the TPP and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is
one way to do this . But the Obama Administration, despite pursuing these
objectives, has yet to make them a real priority. President Clinton sent Vice

President Gore out to debate NAFTA with Ross Perot on live TV. He spent real
(and precious) political capital to bat down opposition (much of it within his
own party) and ensure congressional passage. By letting pending Free Trade
Agreements with South Korea and Colombia twist in the wind for most of his
first term, President Obama sent the signal, to friends and foes alike, that his
trade agenda wasnt very important, and certainly not worth fighting for.
Into that leadership void has stepped China, with a different vision for the
global economy. Can we really blame our friends for taking them more
seriously, if we fail to contest that vision in a more credible way?

The CP sustains U.S. leadership in the international

economy
Wenfeng, 15 --- Associate Professor at the China Institutes of
Contemporary International Relations (3/31/15, Wang, America Needs More
Domestic Consensus on Issues in the International System,
http://www.chinausfocus.com/finance-economy/america-needs-moredomestic-consensus-on-issues-in-the-international-system/, article
downloaded on 6/3/16, JMP)
As the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) attracts more and more
countries many of which representing Americas strongest allies in Europe
like Britain, France and Germany people have begun blaming the U.S. for a
reality it doesnt want to see. For many years, the U.S. has been blocking the
reform of international financial institutions, most importantly among them,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its quota allocation still doesnt reflect
the changes in world economic development. To a certain degree, that is why
China initiated the establishment of the AIIB. As a matter of fact, G20
countries have long reached an agreement on a reform plan of the IMF that
allows countries like China to have an increased quota so that they can have
a greater say in the organizations decision making. The Obama
administration has repeatedly asked Congress to ratify the reform package,
but obviously, the U.S. Congress does not have the interest in doing so,
eliciting fierce criticism both home and abroad. Christine Lagarde, the
managing director of the IMF, said last October that she hoped the U.S.
Congress, will understand the relevance of having an IMF that is
representative of the global economy and includes the people that should sit
at the table. Earlier this month, people heard Jacob Lew, US Secretary of
Treasury, complain to Congress that we are seeking Congressional approval
of the IMF quota and governance reforms, and as Congress keeps delaying,
our international credibility and influence are being threatened.
For years, the Obama administration has emphasized the importance of
competing with rising powers like China over international systems and
institutions . They correctly see the megatrend of international relations and

the character of major power relations. Soft power, such as the ability to
make and control rules that members of international community follow, is
becoming more and more critical in world politics. Thats why the U.S., for
the past several years, has been pushing hard the building of Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) in Asia as an integral part of its rebalancing toward Asia
strategy, and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in Europe,
while at the same time trying to get involved in all kinds of regional
mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific. America wants to be sure that it is not
excluded from the region and that a change of regional order does not hurt
Americas position as a regional leader.
With the second largest economy in the world, it is natural that China wants
to play a role in international system in accordance with its increased power,
contributing more to the development not only of itself but also others.
Facing the difficulties in the reform of international economic institutions like
the IMF, China, together with other countries, has made an effort to establish
international financial institutions like BRICS Development Bank and the AIIB
to meet the financial demand for further development, while the U.S. is not at
the center of these newly created institutions. However, when it comes to the
leadership of the international system, no one can compare with the U.S.
Objectively speaking, America is still No. 1. in todays world: since the end of
WWII, most of the important political and economic multilateral institutions
are America-made, and the U.S. still plays a leading role in them. American
values, principles, and interests are to a great extent reflected in todays
international system. For decades, regardless of the changes happened in
world politics, the U.S. retains primacy in the international system with the
support of most of the developed countries and many of the developing
countries. Even today, China, who is seen by many as the top challenger to
the U.S.-dominated system, sincerely believes that generally the system
should be maintained and overthrowing it is not in Chinas interest.
However, it is widely accepted that America has its own problem when
interacting with the world. U.S. foreign policy has always been frustrated by
isolationism, self-centeredness, and ignorance of the change in the world.
Congress, as a branch of the U.S. government, is more likely to be seen as a
representative of this kind of sentiment. From a historical perspective, the
refusal of IMF reform is definitely not an isolated case of the U.S. Congress
tarnishing the countrys leadership on the international stage. As early as the
end of WW I, U.S. Senate refused to ratify the agreement President Wilson
negotiated with European powers and America lost the opportunity to play a
leading role in world politics for the first time in history by not joining the
League of Nations. Even in the second half of the twentieth century when the
U.S. was in its heydays of world leadership, Congress didnt stop playing a
negative role to interrupt the countrys international behavior. For example,
people like Jesse Helms, the longtime Chairman of U.S. Senate Committee of
Foreign Relations, were so hostile to the United Nations, the most important

international organization in modern world, that they threatened to cut U.S.

funding
So what we see today is, on the one hand, the Obama administration clearly
understands the urgency for the U.S. to be more active in creating, shaping
and reforming the international system and international mechanisms, and
they are working very hard, pushing Americas allies and partners to follow
suit. Deep thinkers like Henry Kissinger are reminding people of the profound
changes in the world order and the importance for America to take the lead.
On the other hand, a strong domestic consensus in still not in place, and
because of obstacles in its political system, America just cannot act in an
efficient way.
Liberal scholars who believe the role of international institutions and
economic interdependence like G. John Ikenberry have long argued that a
world system made by America and supports the values of America will work
even if America itself is no longer in the drivers seat and countries like China
take that position, so long as the rules dont change. Obviously, for America
as a country, this is a hard sell. It is still very difficult for Americans, both
those who support Americas engagement with the world and those who
dont care so much about the countrys relations with the international
system, to imagine a world in which others take the leadership is in Americas
own interest. For many Americans, represented by members of U.S.
Congress, it is the most important thing that America stays as the leader,
whether the system and the institutions truly represent those idealistic values
doesnt matter so much, or, only America can hold those values and
principles while others just cannot. America still has time to develop the
consensus and the wisdom necessary to strike a balance between Americas
leadership in the international system and the demand of others to have
enough space not only to survive in the system but also to prosper. As they
prosper, their voices will be heard and their interest will be considered. For
the international system created by America to survive the tremendous
change the world is undergoing, others need to be assured that they also
have the opportunities in it and they have something to offer , and America
still has a lot of homework to do.

2nc Solves South China Sea

***note when prepping file --- if you want to use this
evidence you should include a line in the counterplan
directing the ADB to fund the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline
(TAGP) and Trans-ASEAN Electricity Grid (TAEG)
The counterplan is necessary to take the lead to resolve
SCS disputes --- will force the AIIBs hand to engage in cofinancing on the issue
Taggart, 6/10/16 (Stewart, Chinas AIIB Voting Structure: South China Sea
Pressure Point? http://grenatec.com/chinas-aiib-voting-structure-south-chinasea-pressure-point/, article downloaded 6/12/16, JMP)
Can the Asian Infrastructure Investment Banks (AIIB) voting structure
moderate Chinese territorial assertiveness in the South China Sea? Its an
intriguing idea.
AIIB votes require a 76% majority. China holds 25% of the votes.
Despite this Chinese veto, the AIIBs other shareholders can make a very
strong statement.
The reason: the AIIBs professed independence from Chinese Communist
Party control would be severely questioned if China overruled other AIIB
members.
China wont want that. On the other hand: the South China Sea is the
Elephant in the Room with the AIIB.
Given Chinas increasing political isolation regarding its Nine-Dotted Line
claim to the entire South China Sea, China could use a political escape hatch.
Suitably united, the AIIBs other countries can provide it.
The escape hatch would be for the AIIB to fund infrastructure that can be
used to service Joint Development Areas in the South China Sea.
These JDAs could be created in contested areas off Vietnam, the Philippines,
Indonesia and Taiwan.
Oil, gas, methane hydrates, renewable energy and even fisheries within the
JDAs could then be jointly developed by Chinese and Southeast Asian energy
and fisheries companies.
The beauty of JDAs is that countries with contesting claims to a proposed
offshore agree to set those territorial claims aside indefinitely while they
cooperate to develop the resources within the contested areas.

Final territorial determination is postponed until far down the track. At that
point the stakes are lower because the resources have been developed.
All countries in the region including China publicly support the concept of
joint development as a means of reducing risk of war in the South China
Sea.
Given this, no one would be seen as backing down.
Successful JDAs exist all over the world. Three have operated successfully for
decades in the Gulf of Thailand, adjacent to the South China Sea.
Therefore, Southeast Asias AIIB members, along with the AIIBs European
members and South Korea, could unite behind proposals for AIIB funding of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nation States (ASEAN) proposed TransASEAN Gas Pipeline (TAGP) and Trans-ASEAN Electricity Grid (TAEG).
If China dug in its heels in opposition, presumably due to conflict with its
Nine-Dotted Line territorial claim, China could probably muster 47% of the
AIIBs votes in support of its position.
Support would likely come from Russia and the AIIBs Central Asian countries
and Middle Eastern countries.
European Union members of the AIIB would almost certainly unite in favor of
JDAs, along with South Korea and the AIIBs ASEAN members themselves.
Together, these would amount to another 47%.
In other words, a virtual tie. Turkey, Brazil and South Africa would represent
wild card votes.
In the end, such a vote would offer only a pyrrhic victory for either side. It
could open up such large political divisions within the AIIB that the
organization breaks apart. No one wants that.
To date, Chinas underestimated the blow back from its geopolitical overreach in the South China Sea. Its been made worse by Chinas domestic
propaganda machine.
Its been using the South China Sea as a distracting nationalistic lightning rod
to shift attention from issues like needed reform of domestic residency laws
(the hoku system) pollution and corruption.
The AIIB is an important symbol for the Communist Party that Chinas
emergence as a global player represents the ripening fruit of decades of
personal sacrifice by the Chinese people.
While its an overstretch to call the AIIB it a vanity project for China it is
something close.

Given this, China will work hard to keep controversial items off the AIIBs
agenda. This gives other members an avenue for getting Chinas attention
that other avenues like appeals to UN Tribunals havent.
Happily, the issue of the South China Sea need not be framed in such naked
political terms. If the AIIB shies away from funding compelling infrastructure
projects in Southeast Asia like the TAGP and TAEG, others can step in .
These include the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, the
Green Climate Fund and even Japans $200 billion export infrastructure fund
which alone boasts twice the capital of the AIIB .
If these organizations worked together to fund a common plan in the South
China Sea and share funding, the AIIBs hand could be forced . This would be
particularly so if the AIIB were internally divided along the voting lines
outlined above.
The big issue here isnt a zero-sum involving one side or the other prevailing
over the legality/acceptability of Chinas Nine Dotted Line. The bigger issue is
the preparation of the world economy for the 21st Century.
That means building out the infrastructure to enable more of Asias people to
join the global economy and to enable Asias economies (like everywhere) to
progressively decarbonize and more sustainably steward their resources like
fisheries.
Given this, joint development in the South China Sea can set a crucial
precedent benefitting everyone particularly China.
Joint infrastructure in the region serving joint development areas would
represent a crucial first piece of Chinas own proposed One Belt, One Road
concept of deepening cross-border interconnections between Asias
economies.
Taking this a few steps further State Grid Corp of China, Chinas electricity
power line state champion, envisages a global electricity grid by 2050. That
idea isnt farfetched at all.
Reaching agreement on core elements of such networks in the next 10 years
can put the world economy on the kind of multi-decade economic trajectory
that can increase wealth, pay the future income streams to fund aging global
populations and solve climate change .
Whats needed is to get global institutions and the worlds countries in
greater alignment.
They can start in the South China Sea.

2nc CP Boosts Legitimacy of Existing

Institutions
Reforms will boost the legitimacy of existing institutions
Dr. Kawai, 15 --- Professor at the University of Tokyos Graduate School of
Public Policy (last modified on 8/7/2015, Masahiro Kawai, ASIAN
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT BANK: CHINA AS RESPONSIBLE
STAKEHOLDER?, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Evolving
International Financial Order, http://spfusa.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/AIIB-Report_4web.pdf, downloaded 6/1/16, JMP)
(2) Reform of the Existing International Financial Institutions
The existing international financial institutions also need to reform
themselves to serve their member countries more fairly. Indeed, ADB has
introduced four major reforms.
First, it has decided to expand its financial capacity by merging its Asian
Development Funds lending operations with its Ordinary Capital Resources.
This innovative initiative is expected to increase ADBs annual operations by
50%, from $14 billion in 2014 to $20 billion in 2017. The greater financial
capacity will allow ADB to increase its support for sustainable development
and poverty reduction in the region. With the United Nations post- 2015
Sustainable Development Goals and a global pact on climate change
(expected to be ratified this year), ADB will scale up support for sustainable
infrastructure, education, health and actions to combat climate change.
Second, ADB has decided to make loan decisions faster, without
compromising project quality and standards for safeguards and procurement.
The average length of internal processing time for loan proposals has been
two to three years. Through internal reforms, such as delegating more
authorities to country offices where projects take place, the bank can halve
the processing time for procurement contracts.
Third, ADB will double assistance for education and health in line with its
Midterm Review of Strategy 2020. ADB will expand its support for quality
education with an emphasis on higher education and vocational training. The
bank will focus health assistance on improving the delivery and efficiency of
health services and systems, including promotion of universal health
coverage.
Fourth, it will strengthen its support for public-private partnerships (PPPs) to
accelerate the flow of private funds to critical infrastructure projects in
developing Asia. For example, ADB has signed a co-advisory agreement with
eight global commercial banks to help developing country governments
develop PPP capacity to deliver bankable transactions, without crowding out
private sector advisors.16 Under the agreement, ADB and the eight banks will

provide independent advice to governments on how to assess the future

income flows of projects, structure PPPs to make them attractive to the
private sector and manage the subsequent PPP bidding process.
In addition to these reforms at ADB, the existing international financial
institutions should adjust voting shares to reflect the change in the economic
and financial weight of emerging and developing countries; otherwise, the
institutions legitimacy will be in doubt . As a first step, the United States
needs to agree to implement the 2010 IMF reform as soon as possible. ADB
should also consider adjusting capital subscription shares and the resulting
voting powers among its member countries. In the long run, such reforms will
lead to a more stable international financial system in a way that is
consistent with the rising importance of emerging and developing countries
in the global economy .

2nc CP Prevents Fragmentation

The counterplan is necessary to rebuild the existing
economic order and prevent fragmentation in Asia that
undermines U.S. influence
Frost, 14 --- Senior Advisor at the East-West Centers Washington, D.C.,
office and a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense
Universitys Institute for National Strategic Studies (December, Ellen L, Rival
Regionalisms and Regional Order: A Slow Crisis of Legitimacy,
http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/free/021115/SR48.pdf,
article downloaded 6/5/16, JMP)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This essay analyzes Asian regionalism, Chinas recent organizational
initiatives, postwar U.S. policies toward regional institutions, the role of U.S.
allies and partners, and current U.S. goals.
MAIN ARGUMENT
Recent economic and security developments threaten to fragment Asias
institutional landscape , erode regional stability, and undermine Asian
confidence in the legitimacy of the institutions and values underpinning the
existing liberal economic order. Rival regionalismsnew or re-energized
regional groupings initiated or heavily supported by China and Russiaare on
the rise. Their goals include providing alternatives to U.S.-led institutions,
thereby avoiding Western-backed conditionality and reducing U.S. influence .
As a result, a slow crisis both of regional and global order and of institutional
legitimacy is emerging .
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Top U.S. officials, including the president, should work to rebuild the
legitimacy of regional and global institutions. The White House needs to
devote far more effort to building a congressional consensus in support of
legislation to reform the International Monetary Fund and comparable
institutions. The first priority should be expanding the voting power of China
and other emerging powers, without conditions.
Concluding and ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and
reauthorizing trade promotion authority are geopolitical imperatives for the
U.S. Some degree of compromise will be required. The president and his top
officials should make the case for the TPP on broadly defined geopolitical and
national security grounds, not just for economic and commercial reasons.
The U.S. should not oppose Chinas organizational initiatives or try to block
other countries from participating in them. Instead, Washington should fully

implement the economic component of its rebalancing policy and expand the
use of soft-power tools.

2nc Fragmentation Link Block / AT: China Wants

AIIB to Complement Existing Order
***note when prepping file --- the bottom part of this
evidence could also be used to defend why the CP
prevents AIIB from overtaking ADB/World Bank.
AIIB can undercut existing institutions --- U.S. and Japan
keep AIIB as a lower-rating financial institution by not
joining
Terada, 5/25/16 --- professor of international relations at Doshisha
University, Kyoto, Japan (Dr. Takashi Terada, U.S.-Japan Partnership and GeoEconomic Regionalism in Asia: The Rise of TPP and AIIB, http://www.usjpri.org/en/voice/voice14.pdf, article downloaded 6/14/16, JMP)
The United States and Japan also came to share the same basic stance on
the AIIB, according to their reasons for not joining. For one, the AIIB will
undercut existing institutions and could loosen lending standards .
Furthermore, given the requirement for fair governance, some
infrastructural projects may be unsustainable, particularly in posing too much
of a burden on the environment. Lastly, the AIIB may not prevent taxpayers
money from being used without restriction due to the lack of transparency.
The often highlighted $ 8 trillion of demand for infrastructure projects in Asia
can be questionable as China dominates the figure (nearly 4.5 trillion dollars)
as seen in the Figure 1 below. China can theoretically manipulate the AIIB to
help Chinas own infrastructure demands with the money coming from more
experienced other nations and financial institutions with skilful expertise. This
moral hazard problem should also be clearly presented. In sum, since the AIIB
will not mitigate these undesired effects that contradict current US and
Japanese rules and norms concerning foreign aid and infrastructure
investment, neither country has sought participation in the organisation. This
assessment seemed to be sustained by Chinas Finance Minister, Lou Jiwei,
who indicated that China has little appetite for rules that the United States
and Japan have cherished , given his claim that the West puts forward some
rules that we dont think are optimal.
[graph omitted]
Having Japan on board would show regional solidarity and allow the AIIB to
secure multilateral credit functionality, which it would otherwise lack. In
short, high credit standards reduce the cost of fund procurement, and most
AIIB members are politically unstable and have problems with their national
creditthat is, lower credit ratingsnot to mention with their legal systems

and their enforcement. In fact, Chinas state-owned financial institutions,

including the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China,
have only AA- ratings, while the World Bank and the ADB hold AAA ratings . It
is part of their shared tactics that the AIIB can be kept as a lower-rating
financial institution by their non-participation in it.

China intends to use the AIIB to overtake the ADB and

help construct a new Asian order that excludes the U.S.
Frost, 14 --- Senior Advisor at the East-West Centers Washington, D.C.,
office and a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense
Universitys Institute for National Strategic Studies (December, Ellen L, Rival
Regionalisms and Regional Order: A Slow Crisis of Legitimacy,
http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/free/021115/SR48.pdf,
article downloaded 6/5/16, JMP)
Pan-Asianism, Rival Regionalisms, and the Challenge from China
Speaking to a mostly Central Asian and Middle Eastern audience in May 2014,
Xi Jinping called for a new Asian security architecture, from which the
United States would presumably be excluded. Stressing that we all live in
the same Asian family, he declared that it is time for Asia to establish
common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. In a veiled
reference to the United States, Xi added that to beef up and entrench a
military alliance targeted at a third party is not conducive to maintaining
common security.28
Spokespersons from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other Chinese officials
have reiterated the theme that Asia needs new security architecture based
on the idea of Asia for Asians (that is, not for Americans). This vision has
broad emotional appeal to many Asians, not just Chinese. Tapping into these
sentiments, China played a leading part in establishing two new regional
institutionsthe Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the NDB
announced by the BRICS.
The AIIB is clearly intended as an alternative to the ADB , which is backed by
the West and Japan and which by tradition is always headed by a Japanese
national. The AIIBs headquarters are in Beijing. Initial reports indicate that
the bank will start operations with $50 billion in paid-in capital, with another
$50 billion to follow. This amount pales in comparison with Asian
infrastructure needs, which the ADB estimates to be $8 trillion, but this initial
funding could become a catalyst for additional private-sector investment as
well as a source of financing for major public projects.
Although few details of the AIIBs actual operation and governance have been
formally decided and revealed, 21 governments signed the memorandum of
understanding establishing the AIIB in October 2014. Singaporea stalwart

supporter of sound banking practicesis a founding member, and Australia

and South Korea are contemplating second-stage membership. One
Australian commentary noted that the more countries that sign on, the less
China-dominated the bank will be.29 Pressure from founding members has
already prompted senior official Jin Liqun, head of Chinas AIIB preparatory
group and the designated head of the new bank, to claim that the AIIB will
meet high international standards, including project evaluation and
environmental protection, but critics are skeptical.30
Not much is known about the other new organization, the NDB. Although the
banks headquarters will be located in Shanghai, the presidency was awarded
to India. The start-up capital pledged so far is $50 billion, which includes $10
billion in paid-in capital and $40 billion to be paid upon request. Plans call for
doubling that sum to $100 billion. China has pledged $41 billion, while Brazil,
Russia, and India each pledged $18 billion and South Africa $5 billion. There is
no doubt that Beijing will have substantial influence within the bank.
Nevertheless, the nature and size of the start-up funding and the banks
continuing reliance on the U.S. dollar have caused some analysts to dismiss
the NDBs more ambitious claims.31
To the extent that new institutions give voice to countries unrepresented in
international institutions and mobilize more resources for regional
development and security, they will be welcomed. But there are strong signs
that these institutions goals include reducing U.S. influence and sidestepping
the conditionality and rules-based order embodied in the IMF, the WTO, the
World Bank, and the ADB . Chinese statements supporting the need for new
regional and global architecture implicitly challenge the ideal of an
international liberal order based on democratically elected governments,
open economies, and an independent judicial system. 32

China wants to develop new economic rules and norms

Frost, 14 --- Senior Advisor at the East-West Centers Washington, D.C.,
office and a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense
Universitys Institute for National Strategic Studies (December, Ellen L, Rival
Regionalisms and Regional Order: A Slow Crisis of Legitimacy,
http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/free/021115/SR48.pdf,
article downloaded 6/5/16, JMP)
Even in polite diplomatic language, there is a marked contrast between U.S.
support for existing institutions and Chinas challenge to the regional and
global order upheld by those same institutions. Appearing with Chinese
foreign minister Wang Yi in October 2014, Kerry stated that the United States
welcomes the rise of a peaceful, prosperous, and stable China that plays a
responsible role and contributes to upholding the existing rules and the
norms on economic and security issues. Echoing Xi, Wang replied that in

keeping with the trend of human progress the United States and China
need to work together to create a new model of major country relations
(emphasis added).38

Beefing up the ADB solves without allowing China to exert

more influence globally
Soergel, 6/10/15 --- Economy Reporter at U.S. News (Andrew, Amid U.S.
Paralysis, China Cashing In; While Congress has failed to move forward with
IMF reforms, Beijing is poised to boost its banking power,
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/10/asian-infrastructureinvestment-bank-chinas-answer-to-western-marginalization, article
downloaded on 6/7/16, JMP)
When 57 countries soon RSVP to a party the U.S. is pressuring them not to
attend, it'll be at least partially Congress' fault for stubbornly refusing to deal
with an economic elephant that wandered into the Capitol about five years
ago.
Charter members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are expected
to sign the bank's Articles of Agreement a document serving as bylaws and,
essentially, a new member sign-up sheet by the end of June. The bank, first
proposed by China in 2013, will be a government-supported financial
institution designed to lend cash for infrastructure and development projects
across Asia. Member nations will make individual contributions to the bank's
resource pool, helping back those projects while getting in on the ground floor
of the new institution.
That's all well and good, except a similar bank already exists: The Asian
Development Bank (in which the U.S. holds the second-highest percentage of
voting power, behind Japan) has been around since 1966 and essentially
serves the same purpose . And although the two institutions have vowed to
play nicely and work together in the region, some see the new bank as yet
another move by Beijing to increase its influence on the world stage , with the
U.S. making largely impotent attempts to counter its rise.
"The Obama administration, when it comes to China, has no manhood," says
Peter Morici, a professor and economist at the University of Maryland.
"China's getting away with a lot of crap, both economically and securitywise."

2nc ADB Standards Superior to AIIB

AIIB doesnt include same level of standards --- including
environmental safeguards
Terada, 5/25/16 --- professor of international relations at Doshisha
University, Kyoto, Japan (Dr. Takashi Terada, U.S.-Japan Partnership and GeoEconomic Regionalism in Asia: The Rise of TPP and AIIB, http://www.usjpri.org/en/voice/voice14.pdf, article downloaded 6/14/16, JMP)
The U.S. responses
In its policy, the United States has come to adopt the stance that China
cannot be integrated into international institutions based on Western norms,
given the risk that China could advance its national interests in those
institutions, as readily shown by its challenges to existing institutional and
normative structures in seeking to create alternative institutions. Indeed, the
AIIB has been viewed as part of Chinas potential institutional weaponry
against the ADB , in which Japan and the United States serve as the two
leading shareholders, at 15.7% and 15.6%, respectively. The United States
once detailed potential shortcomings of the AIIB: its failure to meet
environmental standards, procurement requirements, and other safeguards
adopted by the World Bank and the ADB, including protections aimed to
prevent the forced removal of vulnerable populations from their lands. These
deficits reveal that the AIIB places inadequate conditionality on its lending
with regard to environmental protection and workers rights , two significant
agenda that the United States incorporated into the TPPs structure.

AT: Permutation
***note when prepping file --- the link evidence in both
Japan DA and Fragmentation Net Benefit are also
useful/necessary to respond to the permutation.
AIIB unlikely to ensure protection of human rights and
environment but if it does it will be from pressure caused
by U.S. and Japan not prematurely joining
Terada, 5/25/16 --- professor of international relations at Doshisha
University, Kyoto, Japan (Dr. Takashi Terada, U.S.-Japan Partnership and GeoEconomic Regionalism in Asia: The Rise of TPP and AIIB, http://www.usjpri.org/en/voice/voice14.pdf, article downloaded 6/14/16, JMP)
It is safe to assert that American and Japanese participation in the AIIB is
currently unlikely. China has already clarified that the AIIBs loan rule would
not involve any political conditionality, including the protection of human
rights , in order to focus on building infrastructure and delivering finances
quickly, which differentiate it from the ADBs purposesnamely, to reduce
poverty. ADB normally provides a return rate of only 1% for basic
infrastructural projects, while Chinas historical records illustrated that some
cases in Pakistan and Thailand, Chinas SOEs involved in infrastructure
projects required a rate of 6%. This non-Western approach possibly pursued
by AIIB continues to discourage the United States and Japan from viewing
the AIIB positively and to stress the value that they place upon respecting
freedom, human health, and the environment in their engagement in
infrastructure projects. Indeed, this is the essence of President Obamas
repeated statement, If we dont write the rules, China will write the rules out
in that region. As a response to President Obama and Prime Minister Abe
perhaps, the ADB also endeavoured to maintain competitiveness and
attractiveness by undertaking major reforms including implementing more
streamlined procurement processes, quicker approval processes for key
projects, and the possible consolidation of the Asian Development Fund and
the Ordinary Capital Resources, its two main financial instruments. Beginning
operation in 2016, the AIIB has been touted by its president, Jin Liqun, as a
clean lean and green multilateral bank with the highest international
lending standards in terms of environmental and social issues, as well as
being far faster than any other in existence. If all of this were realised, then it
would be a result of American and Japanese decision not to participate given
their scepticism , yet all the while enhancing the possibility of their eventual
participation , making the geo-political economy viewpoint on Asian

regionalism almost meaningless and creating more stability in the regional

economic order-building process.