2017-China's Network Strategy For Seeking Greatness

The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2017, 1–29
doi: 10.1093/cjip/pow016
Article
Article
China’s Network Strategy for Seeking Great

Power Status
Xun Pang†,*, Lida Liu‡, and Stephanie Ma§
†
Xun Pang is Professor at Department of International Relations, Tsingua University, ‡Lida Liu is
PhD candidate at Department of International Relations, Tsingua University and §Stephanie Ma is
Master Student at Department of International Relations, Tsingua University
*Corresponding author. Email: xpang@tsinghua.edu.cn
Abstract
Existing scholarship on the rise of China and Chinese foreign policy has largely neg-
lected to explain one puzzling phenomenon—although China’s network position in
the global economic system has become more similar to that of developed countries,
China continues to set its foreign policy from the perspective of a developing country.
By analysing the relationship between the environmental possibilities and China’s in-
tentional strategy, this article argues that the sharp contrast between China’s pos-
itions in the international political and economic systems reflects China’s ‘network
strategy of embedded rise’. There are two mechanisms that go in opposite directions
and jointly determine China’s foreign policy location in the international political spec-
trum. The first, called the ‘structural alienation effect’, is that wherein divergence in
the centre-periphery positions in the global economic network increases the hetero-
geneity of two countries’ preferences, attitudes, and incentives, and in turn weakens
alignment of their foreign policies. However, this structural effect is moderated by the
second mechanism, namely, the ‘strategic affinity effect’. China’s strategy of assum-
ing the role of a ‘broker’ to connect developing countries at the periphery of the inter-
national political and economic networks with developed countries at the centre
achieves high ‘betweenness’ centrality, and so increases its social capital and influ-
ence in international politics. This article tests the proposed theory of China’s network
strategy of embedded rise through hierarchical models that use global trade network
centrality data and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) votes of 161 de-
veloping countries from 1994 to 2012. Our findings show that the globalized world
both constrains and enables China’s great power status.
Introduction
Decoding China’s strategy for its rise is one of the central research tasks in contemporary
foreign policy analysis, because how China strategizes its rise will profoundly affect the
C The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Institute of Modern International Relations,
V
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2 The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2017, Vol. 10, No. 1
stability of the current international system and global order.1 Despite numerous descrip-
tions and predictions of the trajectory of China’s rise,2 an interesting phenomenon with re-
gard to China’s foreign policy has been largely unexplored. China’s economic ascendancy
can be reasonably characterized as its successful occupation of a more central position in
the world economy, largely attributable to its proactive engagement in globalization and
strong economic connections with the other economic powers. Meanwhile, Beijing has re-
peatedly and firmly insisted upon the immutability of its self-identified status as a develop-
ing country and foreign policy alignment with the developing world. How can we make
sense of the sharp contrast between the rising China’s rapidly ascending economic status
and its constant political stance?
Policymaking is the art of optimizing opportunities for the public availability of re-
sources within the constraints of competing domains set by the macro structure.3 To under-
stand how and why China chooses its positions in the international economic and political
dimensions, it is crucial to take into account structural forces and strategic endeavours as
well as their interaction. Modern network analysis provides a theoretical framework and
empirical tools to understand the decisions and behaviours of socially embedded states in
international politics.4 From the perspective of network analysis, this article proposes a the-
ory, which we call ‘China’s network strategy of embedded rise’, to explain the contrast be-
tween China’s proactive advance towards the world economic centre and its political
1 John Mearsheimer, ‘The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia’, Chinese
Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2010), pp. 381–96; Robert S. Ross, ‘Balance of
Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation and Balancing in East Asia’, Security
Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2010), pp. 355–95; Iskander Rehman, ‘Keeping the Dragon at Bay:
India’s Counter-Containment of China in Asia’, Asian Security, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2009), pp. 114–43;
Thomas J. Christensen, ‘Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and
U.S. Policy toward East Asia’, International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2006), pp. 81–126; David
Shambaugh, ‘The New Strategic Triangle: U.S. and European Reactions to China’s Rise’,
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2005), pp. 5–25; Chih-Yu Shih, ‘Breeding a Reluctant
Dragon: Can China Rise into Partnership and Away from Antagonism?’, Review of
International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2005), pp. 755–74; Abramo F. K. Organski and Jacek
Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Arthur Waldron, ‘The
Rise of China: Military and Political Implications’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No.
4 (2005), pp. 715–33.
2 C. Fred Bergsten, Charles Freeman, Nicholas R. Lardy, and Derek J. Mitchell, China’s Rise:
Challenges and Opportunities (Washington DC: Peterson Institute, 2009); Charles Glaser, ‘Will
China’s Rise Lead to War? Why Realism Does Not Mean Pessimism’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90,
No. 2 (2011), pp. 80–91; Martin A. Smith, Power in the Changing Global Order: the US, Russia
and China (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Simon Reich and Richard Ned Lebow, Good-bye
Hegemony!: Power and Influence in the Global System (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2014).
3 Persson Torsten and Guido Enrico Tabellini, Macroeconomic Policy, Credibility and Politics
(Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1990).
4 Michael D. Ward, Katherine Stovel, and Andrey Sacks, ‘Network Analysis and Political
Science’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 14 (2011), pp. 245–64; Emilie M. Hafner-
Burton, Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Network Analysis for International
Relations’, International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 3 (2009), pp. 559–92.
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2017, Vol. 10, No. 1 3
alignment with the ‘rest’. The increasing divergence in China’s structural position in the
world trade network relative to that of developing countries generates heterogeneity in their
preferences, attitudes, and incentives, and in turn negatively affects their foreign policy
alignment. At the same time, China strategically maintains foreign policy alignment with
those developing countries whose structural positions provide China with the structural
holes through which to pursue political prominence. Structural and strategic mechanisms,
called in this article respectively the ‘structural alienation effect’ and the ‘strategic affinity
effect’, moderate each other and jointly determine the relative location of China’s foreign
policy in the international political spectrum.
The proposed theory of ‘China’s network strategy of embedded rise’ is then empirically
tested through data from 1994 to 2012 on 161 developing countries. To measure the de-
pendent variable, we utilized the estimates of foreign policy ideal points based on UNGA
votes, and used the distance between two ideal points to measure the level of foreign policy
alignment between countries. The measure shows that, over the course of the 18 sample
years, China has, on average, managed to maintain its foreign policy ideal point close to
that of the developing countries. We also found that the centrality of China’s structural pos-
ition in the global trade network, measured by the eigenvector centrality in the world trade
network over the same time period, exhibits a trend of increasing convergence with the de-
veloped countries. We then applied a hierarchical model to test the proposed interaction of
structural and strategic mechanisms to explain the absence of a relationship between for-
eign policy alignment and network centrality in the world trade system. The empirical evi-
dence supports the theory of China’s network strategy of embedded rise, that is, that
China’s foreign policy alignment with developing countries is jointly determined by the
‘structural alienation effect’ and the ‘strategic affinity effect’.
This research, which takes the perspective of a network analysis, bridges a significant
gap in the existing literature on the rise of China. The realist scholarship focuses primarily
on the bilateral interactions between China as a rising power and the United States as the
incumbent hegemon.5 The dominant discourse seldom takes into account China’s rise in
the context of globalization. In contrast, liberalists believe that trade, and economic inter-
dependence in general, has direct influence on international politics, and that globalization
not only sets constraints on but also provides opportunities to a state for strategic policy-
making that may not be available in a closed economic system.6 However, there seems to
5 Mearsheimer, ‘The Gathering Storm’, pp. 381–96; Christensen, ‘Fostering Stability or Creating
a Monster?’, pp. 81–126; Shaun Breslin, ‘Power and Production: Rethinking China’s Global
Economic Role’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2005), pp. 735–53; Waldron,
‘The Rise of China’; Nicholas R. Lardy, ‘The Economic Rise of China: Threat or Opportunity?’,
Economic Commentary (2003). https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publi
cations/economic-commentary/economic-commentary-archives/2003-economic-commenta
ries/ec-20030801-the-economic-rise-of-china-threat-or-opportunity.aspx
6 Dale C. Copeland, Economic Interdependence and War (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2014); John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russet, ‘Assessing the Liberal Peace with
Alternative Specifications: Trade still Reduces Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 36,
No. 4 (1999), pp. 423–42; Stuart A. Bremer, ‘Democracy and Militarized Interstate Conflict,
1816–1965’, International Interactions, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1993), pp. 231–49; Zeev Maoz and Bruce
Russett, ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’, American
Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (1993), pp. 624–38; Stuart A. Bremer, ‘Dangerous
be within the liberal scholarship a lack of interest in examining China’s intentional strat-
egies in its endeavour for great power status. At the same time, foreign policy analysis to
date on China’s rise is mainly interested in interpreting the strategies as reflected in
Beijing’s claims and actions.7 What remains unanswered is how the structural discourse
and strategic consideration interact with each other and the foreign policy consequences
thereof.
The Rise of China amid Globalization

China has often been cited as an exemplar of a globalization winner. By proactively
engaging in globalization, China has demonstrated its willingness to accept the current
economic world order.8 In the political arena, however, China keeps a cautious dis-
tance from the US-led liberal democratic order, emphasizing that developing countries
are an important international political force through which to change the current
world political order. Therefore, China has repeatedly and firmly declared that its for-
eign policy has consistently and unwaveringly aligned with the developing world and
will continue to do so. More controversially, China maintains, and even strengthens its
ties with politically marginalized countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.
The sharp contrast between China’s ‘acceptive’ orientation in the economic dimension
and its ‘rejective’ orientation in the international political domain is worrisome to
many, because it arouses uncertainties as to what strategy China will take in seeking
great power status, and the implications for the United States and the world as a whole.
Whither and why does China’s deep embeddedness in the world’s liberal market econ-
omy fail to make it more willing to accept the political status quo in international
relations?
China’s Economic Ascendancy as an Open Economy

An important characteristic of China’s rise is that its trajectory coincides with the country’s
active engagement in globalization, as Figure 1 demonstrates. The figure, based on
Dyads Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965’, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, Vol. 36, No. 21 (1992), pp. 309–41; Michael W. Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and
Foreign Affairs’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1983), pp. 205–35; Robert O.
Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition
(Boston: Little and Brown, 1977).
7 Yan Xuetong, ‘From Keeping a Low Profile to Striving for Achievement’, Chinese Journal of
International Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2014), pp. 153–84; Yong Deng, China’s Struggle for Status:
The Realignment of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
Jeremy Paltiel, The Empire’s New Clothes: Cultural Particularism and Universal Value in
China’s Quest for Global Status (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Bonnie S. Glaser and
Evan S. Medeiros, ‘The Changing Ecology of Foreign Policy-Making in China: The Ascension
and Demise of the Theory of “Peaceful Rise”’, China Quarterly, Vol. 190 (2007), pp. 291–310.
8 John Ikenberry, ‘The Future of the Liberal World Order’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 3 (2011),
pp. 56–68; Amitai Etzioni, ‘Is China a Responsible Stakeholder?’, International Affairs, Vol. 87,
No. 3 (2011), pp. 539–53; Nicholas R. Lardy, China in the World Economy (Washington:
Peterson Institute Press, 1994).
100
CINCx100
%US GDP
Economic Globalization
Social Globalization
80
Political Globalization
Total Globalization
60
40
20
0
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Fig. 1. China’s Globalization.
indicators of globalization9 and national material capabilities,10 shows that China’s econ-
omy started to take off in the 1980s, soon after implementation of the ‘Reform and
Opening-up’ policy. China’s economic size and material power, relative to that of the
United States (measured by the ratio of their CINC scores), also increases in tandem with
China’s deepening participation in globalization. ‘The rise of China’ became a buzzword
phrase among policymakers and international relations scholars in the early 1990s, when
China’s economy and material strength began to grow at an astonishing pace. During the
same time period, the country’s globalization also accelerated on the economic, political,
and social levels.11 With regard to globalization generally, among 207 world economies
China ranked 129th in 1970, 149th in 1980, 110th in 1990, and 73rd in 2010.
9 Axel Dreher, Measuring Globalization and Gauging its Consequence (New York: Springer,
2008); Axel Dreher, ‘Does Globalization Affect Growth? Empirical Evidence from a New
Index’, Applied Economics, Vol. 38, No. 10 (2006), pp. 1091–110.
10 David J. Singer, ‘Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of
States, 1816-1985’, International Interactions, Vol. 14, No.2 (1987), pp. 115–32; David J.
Singer, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, ‘Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major
Power War, 1820-1965’ in Bruce Russett, ed., Peace, War, and Numbers (Beverly Hills:
Sage, 1972), pp. 19–48.
11 Surprisingly, the most globalized aspect of China is political globalization defined in the
dataset as international political interactions and measured by the number of embassies in
a country, number of membership in international organizations, frequency of participation
in missions of the United Nations Security Council missions, and number of signed
International trade is one of the most important aspects of economic globalization, and
plays an important role in supporting China’s economic growth. China has not only grown
into a global trade power, but also developed strong connections with other trade powers.
According to the World Bank, since 1992, China’s biggest trade partners have been the
United States, Japan, South Korea, and Germany, all of whom are developed countries. The
United States surpassed Japan as China’s largest exporter in 1997, importing more than
15% of Chinese goods and services each year since 1993. Japan was China’s biggest impor-
ter for most of the years between 1992 and 2013, though its share declined from 16.98%in
1992 to 8.32%in 2013. China’s top five trade partners are all Western countries.12
China’s rapid economic ascendancy may be better understood within a global context
rather than on its individual attributes of economic size, growth rate, and global trade
share. The BACI-CEPII database provides several centrality measures, using network ana-
lysis of world trade data from 1995 to 2012.13 There are different types of centrality in net-
work analysis through which to measure the prominence of a node in a network, including
degree centrality, strength centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, and
eigenvector centrality. The degree centrality and strength centrality are local centrality
measures, and closeness centrality and eigenvalue centrality are essentially global
measures.14
Figure 2 shows the changes of China’s network centrality in the global trade network
compared with selected countries and country groups. Although China’s centrality is not
identical across different measures, China is inarguably a central node in the world trade
network, and its centrality level is closer to that of developed countries than developing
countries. China’s strength centrality increased rapidly from 1995 to 2010. In addition,
China’s centrality level is significantly higher than the average level of developed countries,
though lower than that of the United States. Different from the local measures, the two glo-
bal measures—closeness centrality and eigenvalue centrality—do not suggest a rapid in-
crease of China’s centrality in the world trade network, but the centrality level is close to
that of the United States and slightly higher than the average level of the developed coun-
tries during the sample years. Compared to the local centrality measures, China’s global
centrality experiences more salient fluctuations over time. Nonetheless, according to all
four centrality measures, China belongs at the centre of the global trade network, and its
centre-periphery position bears much more similarity to that of the United States and the
developed world than developing countries.
China’s Declaratory Unchanged Foreign Policy Standing

Beijing’s foreign policy stance is in sharp contrast to its proactive engagement in globaliza-
tion. In numerous official foreign policy statements, China repeatedly asserts its status as a
international treaties. The data show that China has been an active participant in interna-
tional politics and accepted some international norms. However, the data does not speak to
how much China’s political standing has changed.
12 Data are from 1992 to 2013, http://wits.worldbank.org/country-analysis-visualization.html.
13 Luca De Benedictis, Silvia Nenci, Cianluca Santoni, Lucia Tajoli, and Claudio Vicarelli,
‘Network Analysis of World Trade Using the BACI-CEPII Dataset’, Global Economy Journal,
Vol. 14, Nos. 3–4 (2014), pp. 287–343.
14 Matthew Jackson, Social and Economic Networks (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2010).
CHINA
DevelopingAVE.
2.0
30
DevelopedAVE.
USA
IRAN
SUDAN
ZIMBABWE
1.8
25
CHINA
1.6
Degree (%) Centrality
Strength (%) Centrality

DevelopingAVE.
20
DevelopedAVE.
USA
IRAN
1.4
SUDAN
ZIMBABWE
15
1.2
10
1.0
5
0.8
0
1995 2000 2005 2010
1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
Year
2.0
CHINA
0.22 DevelopingAVE.
DevelopedAVE.
USA
IRAN
SUDAN
ZIMBABWE
0.20
1.8
Weighted Closeness Centrality
Eigenvector Centrality
0.18
1.6
0.16
0.14
1.4
CHINA
0.12
DevelopingAVE.
DevelopedAVE.
USA
IRAN
0.10
SUDAN
1.2
ZIMBABWE
1995 2000 2005 2010

1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
Year
Fig. 2. Centrality in World Trade Network.
developing country, and emphasizes its alignment with developing countries as a cohesive
bloc. For example, Beijing claims that ‘China’s foreign policy reflects the nature of a de-
veloping country. China and developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America share
common concerns as regards safeguarding national sovereignty and security, common
interests as regards achieving state development and improving people’s livelihoods, and
common targets as regards promoting a just and fair new international political and eco-
nomic order’.15 The Report at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party states,
‘We will increase unity and cooperation with other developing countries, work with them
to uphold the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and support efforts to
15 Wang Wenbin, ‘Burong hushi de fazhanzhong guojia shuxing’ (‘China’s Nature of Developing
Country cannot be Ignored’), Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), 11 August, 2010, p. 3.
increase their representation and voice in international affairs. China will remain a reliable
friend and sincere partner of other developing countries.’16
China has reiterated its foreign policy affinity with developing countries in many other offi-
cial speeches and documents, consistently pronouncing that it has long practiced the dissemin-
ation of aid to developing countries.17 China’s foreign policy affinity with developing countries
is also reflected in various recently announced economic projects, including the One Belt, One
Road Initiative (Yi Dai Yi Lu) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In
President Xi Jinping’s speech at the 60th Asian-African Summit in Indonesia in 2015, he pro-
posed ‘carrying forward the Bandung Spirit to promote win-win cooperation’, and stated that,
‘no matter how developed it may become and how much the international landscape may
change, China will remain a reliable friend and sincere partner of the developing countries. This
bedrock of China’s foreign policy has not and will never change’.18 Xi reiterated this position at
the seventh BRICS summit in 2015, that China will ‘safeguard the common interests of emerg-
ing markets and other developing nations’.19 Xi stated in 2013 that, ‘China and Africa have al-
ways been a community of shared destinies; similar historical experiences, common
development tasks, as well as shared strategic interests have bound the two sides together’.
Prime Minister Li Keqiang has also on many occasions echoed his predecessors in asserting that
China is a developing country. For instance, during a press conference at the 3rd Session of the
12th National People’s Congress, Li announced, ‘China is still a developing country in every
sense of the term’. In the Report on China’s Implementation of the Millennium Development
Goals (2000–2015), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that, as a ‘responsible major de-
veloping country’, China would continue to offer support to other developing countries.20
However, China’s claimed unchanged foreign policy alignment with the developing
countries is often regarded by external observers as diplomatic rhetoric. When China’s eco-
nomic centre-periphery position diverges rapidly from developing countries yet converges
with developed ones, has China indeed managed to maintain alignment with its old peers?
We use the foreign policy ideal point estimates based on the UNGA votes to determine
whether China’s declaratory foreign policy alignment is simply a facade or supported by
empirical evidence. UNGA votes have been widely applied to measure countries’ foreign
policy preferences.21 By applying the NOMINATE model, the unobserved policy ideal
16 Hu Jintao, ‘Firmly March on the Path of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Strive
to Complete the Building of a Moderately Prosperous Society in all Respects’, Beijing, 2012.
17 Yang Jiechi, ‘Shinian lai woguo waijiao gongzuo de huigu yu zhanwang’ (‘Review and
Outlook of China’s Diplomacy’), Qiushi, No. 20 (2012), pp. 20–22.
18 Xi Jinping, ‘Carry Forward the Bandung Spirit for Win-win Cooperation’, Jakarta, Indonesia,
22 April, 2015.
19 Xi Jinping, ‘Jointly Build Partnership for Bright Future’, Ufa, Russia, 9 July, 2015.
20 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, P.R.C. and United Nations System in China, Report on China’s
Implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015), 2015, http://www.cn.
undp.org/content/china/en/home/library/mdg/mdgs-report-2015-.html.
21 Axel Dreher and Nathan M. Jensen, ‘Country or Leader? Political Change and UN General
Assembly Voting’, European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 29 (2013), pp. 183–96; Peter
Ferdinand, ‘Foreign Policy Convergence in Pacific Asia: The Evidence from Voting in the UN
General Assembly’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 2
(2013), pp. 662–79; Erik Voeten, ‘Data and Analyses of Voting in the United Nations General
Assembly’, in Bob Reinalda, ed., Routledge Handbook of International Organization (New
points of UN Member States can be estimated through their roll call votes in the UNGA.22
The ideal points are located in a one-dimensional policy space, and are calculated every
year up to 2013, based on the votes on UN resolutions brought to the floor in that year.23
With the policy ideal point of the United States as an anchor at the ‘liberal’ pole, the under-
lying policy spectrum is called the ‘conservative-liberal’ spectrum, in accordance with the
conventional labels in the NOMINATE literature. In this study, ‘conservative’ should be
more appropriately understood as ‘anti-US’, and ‘liberal’ as ‘pro-US’. For convenience’s
sake, we adopt the ‘conservative/liberal’ label when referring to locations of foreign policy
ideal points, on the understanding that the label does not necessarily denote an agreed def-
inition of conservative or liberal policy orientation.
Figure 3 shows that China’s foreign policy ideal point has greatly fluctuated since
Beijing regained its UN seat in 1971. In the 1980s prior to the ‘Tiananmen Square
Incident’, China’s foreign policy was measured as more liberal on average than the rest of
the sample years. Between 1989 and 1995, however, the country’s foreign policy experi-
enced a conservative turn. Since 2000, China’s foreign policy has fluctuated around an
average level similar to that in the early 1970s. We plot the time series of the ideal point
against the GDP growth rate to see how the foreign policy change correlates with GDP
growth. The graph does not show a stable relationship between China’s economic growth
and foreign policy standing, and there appear to be multiple structural breaks in the rela-
tionship during the sample years.
Figure 3 demonstrates that China’s foreign policy standing has experienced notable
changes during its rise, but it does not speak to whether China’s foreign policy alignment
with developing countries remains constant. We plot the time-averaging locations and vari-
ations of the foreign policy ideal points for all UN Member States from 1971 to 2012 in
Figure 4. First, the figure supports Voeten’s characterization of a clash within the UNGA,
‘the United States and its Western allies occupy one extreme pole’ as illustrated by the
smaller cloud in the lower right area of the panel, and a ‘counter- hegemonic’ bloc of coun-
tries forming the larger cloud in the lower left area of the panel. Although the states in the
larger cloud are diverse in many aspects, their foreign policy standings in the
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 54–66; Niklas Potrafke, ‘Does Government Ideology Influence
Political Alignment with the U.S.? An Empirical Analysis of Voting in the UN General
Assembly’, Review of International Organization, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2009), pp. 245–68; Axel Dreher
and Martin Gassebner, ‘Does Political Proximity to the U.S. Cause Terror’, Economics
Letters, Vol. 99, No. 1 (2008), pp. 27–29; David H. Bearce and Stacy Bondanella,
‘Intergovernmental Organizations, Socialization, and Member-State Interest Convergence’,
International Organization, Vol. 61, No. 4 (2007), pp. 703–33; Bruce E. Moon, ‘Consensus or
Compliance? Foreign-policy Change and External Dependence’, International Organization,
Vol. 39, No. 2 (1985), pp. 297–329; Richard Vengroff, ‘Instability and Foreign Policy Behavior:
Black Africa in the U.N.’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1976), pp.
425–38.
22 Erik Voeten, ‘Clashes in the Assembly’, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2000), pp.
185–215.
23 See Michael A. Bailey, Anton Strezhnev, and Erik Voeten, ‘Estimating Dynamic State
Preferences from United Nations Voting Data’, Journal of Conflict Resolution (2015), pp.1-27,
DOI: 10.1177/0022002715595700. They also provide more details about the measure of ideal
points of foreign policies and the estimating strategies.
0.0
14
-0.2
12
-0.4
10
-0.6
8
6
-0.8
4
-1.0
2
-1.2
Ideal Point
GDP Growth
0
-1.4
-2
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Fig. 3. Change of China’s Foreign Policy Ideal Point and its GDP Growth Rate.
Level and Variation of State's Ideal Points (All States)

Hungary
Bulgaria
Poland
1.5
Ukraine
Albania
Russia
Standard Deviation of Ideal Pioint
Czechoslovakia South Africa

Romania
Belarus
1.0
Mongolia
Nicaragua
Iran
Yugoslavia Palau
Laos Myanmar
n Democratic Republic Malawi Nauru Federated States of Micronesia
Venezuela Bolivia
Sudan Guatemala
Cyprus Marshall Islands
0.5 Libya Swaziland
Grenada
Egypt
Afghanistan Turkmenistan
Democratic Republic Tuvalu
ofHaiti
the
Dominican Congo
Republic
Uzbekistan
Costa Rica
Paraguay
Oman
Indonesia
Lebanon Lesotho
Colombia
Dominica
Barbados Bosnia and Herzegovina
Uruguay
Malta
China Ivory Coast
El Honduras
Salvador
MalaysiaSt.Cambodia
Gabon
Kitts Brazil
andAfrican
Nevis Argentina
AngolaSaudi ArabiaSt.
Gambia
Chad
Morocco Vanuatu
Ecuador
Lucia
Central
Nepal Bahamas Republic
Liberia Portugal
Qatar
Seychelles
Jordan
Burkina Suriname
GhanaPhilippines
Faso
Equatorial GuineaTajikistan
Tunisia
Benin
Somalia
Madagascar
Ethiopia
India Mexico
Papua
Thailand NewChile
Guinea German Federal Republic
Syria Iraq
Zimbabwe St.
Bangladesh
Nigeria
Bahrain Niger
Vincent
Togo and the Fiji
Grenadines
Panama
Kazakhstan Luxembourg Israel United States of Ame
SriPakistan
Lanka
Comoros
Djibouti
Uganda
Kuwait Antigua
Senegal
Maldives
Jamaica
Solomon Islands
Singapore
&Belize
Barbuda
Botswana
Cameroon New Monaco
Greece Zealand Belgium
Italy
Tanzania
Mauritania Kyrgyzstan JapanAustralia Canada
Sao Brunei
Yemen People's Republic Tome
United Araband Bhutan
Emirates
Sierra Rwanda
Principe
Kenya
Leone Azerbaijan Ireland Netherlands
United Kingdom
Cuba
North Korea Mozambique
Algeria Congo TrinidadMauritius
MaliZambia and Tobago Armenia
South Sudan SanGeorgia
Marino
Vietnam Yemen ArabNamibia Guinea
Republic Burundi
Guyana Finland
Iceland France
Cape Verde
Guinea-Bissau Peru Turkey SpainNorway
Austria Denmark
Liechtenstein
Latvia
Eritrea Samoa South Korea Andorra
Switzerland
Macedonia
Sweden
East Timor Slovenia
Lithuania
Slovakia
Estonia
Czech
Moldova Republic
Tonga Croatia
Montenegro
0.0
-2 -1 0 1 2
Mean Value of Ideal Point
Fig. 4. Average Location and Variation of Ideal Points of UN Member States (1971–2012).
one-dimensional spectrum are close to one another at the ‘conservative’ pole. The United
States and its allies, most of which are rich industrialized countries, sit at the other pole.
The scattered points in the upper-left area of the panel represent mainly transition countries
that have experienced dramatic changes in their foreign policies in the transition years. But
the central trend of their foreign policy categorizes them into the ‘counter-hegemonic’ bloc.
In general, the figure shows that, as regards their positions in the one-dimensional political
4
3
2
Idealpoint Distance
1
0
-1
OECD
EU/EEC
NAM
US
-2
Iran
Sudan
Zimbabwe
-3
DevelopingAVE
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Fig. 5. Foreign Policy Distance between China and Selected Countries.
spectrum, developing countries and developed countries are either diverged or conflictual
as two blocs, and developing countries are politically aligned as a group in the Assembly,
though those countries may have little in common in many other respects. China is in the
bigger cloud, which is consistent with one of the most important principles of China’s UN
diplomacy: to be among the ‘majority’. The figure is supportive of China’s declaratory for-
eign policy alignment with the developing countries.
Figure 5 further underlines China’s foreign policy alignment with selected countries,
measured by the distance of their ideal points. China’s ideal point is very close to the aver-
age ideal point of the developing countries and that of the non-alignment movement states
(the NAM). We selected Iran, Sudan, and Zimbabwe as cases to examine whether China’s
alignment with individual developing countries varies over time. The policy distance be-
tween China and Sudan or China and Iran has been larger on average than that on average
between China and developed countries, though smaller than the distance between China
and the United States.
Figure 5 suggests that, although China maintains its foreign policy alignment with de-
veloping countries as a group, its foreign policy distance from them varies from country to
country as well as across time. Figure 6 plots the distribution of foreign policy alignment
(ideal point distance) between China and developing countries (left panel) and between
China and developed countries (right panel). In general, China’s foreign policy standing is
much closer to the developing countries than the developed countries, but the variation in
the ideal point distance between China and individual developing countries is not
insignificant.
The empirical evidence suggests that China’s declaratory foreign policy alignment with
developing countries cannot be dismissed as merely public rhetoric. On average, the foreign
policy distance between China and the developing countries has rarely changed over the
decades of China’s rise. However, as to individual developing countries, their foreign policy
alignment with China shows both cross-sectional and over-time variations. How, then, do
we explain these variations in light of the stable central trend? And what mechanisms lie be-
hind the changed and the unchanged?
Foreign Policy Distance with Developing Countries Foreign Policy Distance with OECD Countries
1.5
1.5
1.0
1.0
0.5
0.5
0.0
0.0
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Fig. 6. China’s Foreign Policy Alignment with Developing and Developed Countries.
The Rise of China: Structure versus Strategy

Why has China’s foreign policy alignment with the developing countries as a group re-
mained close and almost constant while its structural position in the world trade network
diverges from those countries and becomes closer and more similar to the developed coun-
tries? We find that the existing theories are insufficient to address the sharp contrast be-
tween China’s position in the international economic dimension and that in the political
arena. Therefore, in this section we propose the theory of ‘China’s network strategy of
embedded rise’ and explain how two different mechanisms moderate each other and jointly
determine China’s seemingly unchanged foreign policy alignment with the developing
countries.
Existing Explanations
Within the discourse among realist theorists, discussions of a rising power’s strategies are
centred around alliance, balance of power, conflict, and war.24 Realist theories emphasize
that expansionist foreign policy has historically been correlated with the ascendancy of a
country’s international economic status.25 A rising power of global economic prominence
24 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2001); Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2000); Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, ‘Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks:
Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity’, International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2
(1990), pp. 137–68; Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); Robert Gilpin, ‘The Theory of Hegemonic War’, Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1988), pp. 591–613; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of
International Politics (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1979); Abramo F. K. Organski, World Politics
(New York: Knopf, 1958); Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for
Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1953).
25 Alastair I. Johnston, ‘Is China a Status Quo Power?’, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4
(2003), pp. 5–56; Aeron L. Friedberg, ‘Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar
is expected to seek political dominance in the international arena and aim to take over the
dominant place of the established hegemon through war or other modes of conflict.26
Therefore, given China’s increasing prominence in the global economy, Chinese foreign
policy is expected to eventually seek to challenge the US hegemony.27 As economic clout
can be easily utilized to increase political leverage and influence, China would first lure or
coerce the weaker or smaller states into supporting its international policies. China’s trade
power, for example, could be used to make weaker states support China’s political goals
and foreign policy positions.28 As a result, one should have observed that with China’s
increasing economic prominence, China’s foreign policy ideal point moves farther away
from the United States, while at the same time weaker states become more closely aligned
with China in international politics, which is contrary to the observed relative constant pol-
icy distances between China and those countries.
Liberalism argues that commercial interaction between countries can have a direct and
profound impact on their foreign policies towards each other. ‘Trade peace’ can take the
form of a wide range of mechanisms that lead to policy convergence, from rational cost–
benefit calculus to socialization and cognitive changes.29 Some studies suggest that, given
China’s dense economic connections with Western countries, its foreign policy has become
more similar on many issues to that of those countries.30 However, China’s integration into
the world trade system has not created a shared identity with its most important trade
Asia’, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1993), pp. 5–33; Robert Gilpin, The Political
Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Gilpin,
War and Change in World Politics; Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger.
26 Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
27 John Mearsheimer, ‘China’s Unpeaceful Rise’, Current History, Vol. 105, No. 690 (2006), pp.
160–62; Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International
Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
28 Scott L. Kastner, ‘Buying Influence? Assessing the Political Effects of China’s International
Trade’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 61, No. 6 (2016), pp. 980–1007; Georg Strüver,
‘What Friends are Made of: Bilateral Linkages and Domestic Drivers of Foreign Policy
Alignment with China’, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2016), pp. 170–91; Gustavo
Flores-Macias and Sarah E. Kreps, ‘The Foreign Policy Consequences of Trade: China’s
Commercial Relations with Africa and Latin America, 1992-2006’, The Journal of Politics,
Vol. 75, No. 2 (2013), pp. 357–71.
29 Han Dorussen and Hugh Ward, ‘Intergovernmental Organizations and the Kantian Peace A
Network Perspective’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 52, No. 2 (2008), pp. 189–212; Erik
Gartzke and Quan Li, ‘War, Peace, and the Invisible Hand: Positive Political Externalities of
Economic Globalization’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2003), pp. 561–86;
Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and
International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001); John Oneal and
Bruce Russet, ‘The Classical Liberals were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and
Conflict, 1950–1985’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1997), pp. 267–94;
Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol.
80, No. 4 (1986), pp. 1151–69; Karl Wolfgang Deutsch, The Analysis of International Relations
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968).
30 Stefan Staehle, ‘China’s Shifting Attitude towards United Nations Peacekeeping Operation’,
China Quarterly, Vol. 195 (2008), pp. 631–55.
partners, namely the United States, Japan, and Germany.31 On the contrary, China empha-
sizes its identity as a developing country and does not shrink from stating political differ-
ences with its Western trade partners.
While the sharp contrast between China’s international political and economic positions
cannot be easily explained by the realist and liberalist IR paradigms, the world system the-
ory and the dependency theory can easily interpret China’s mix of ‘economic core’ and ‘pol-
itical (semi-) periphery’ self-location as a reflection of neo-colonialism. Foreign policies of
core states in the international economic system have historically aimed to exploit periph-
eral states and maintain the function of the global capitalist system.32 China’s move from
the periphery or semi-periphery to the core of the world economic system might predicate a
convergence of its foreign policy with that of the core countries and a divergence from that
of countries at the periphery. Criticisms of China’s foreign policy towards developing coun-
tries, especially African countries, emphasize China’s urgent demands for natural resources
to sustain its fast growing economy. China’s declaratory foreign policy affinity with
African countries, including support for the idea of granting a UNSC permanent seat to an
African country, aims to further facilitate its exploitation of those countries at the periph-
ery.33 Therefore, the observed foreign policy alignment of China with the developing coun-
tries can be interpreted as neo-colonialism in disguise. However, as shown in ‘China’s
Declaratory Unchanged Foreign Policy Standing’ section , at present, China’s foreign policy
affinity with the developing countries as a group has remained unchanged during its rise,
and such unchanging alignment cannot reflect the nexus between economic status and pol-
itical orientation as suggested by the world system theory and its variants.
Structure–Strategy Theory: A Network Strategy of Embedded Rise

From the network point of view, it is not the bilateral trade volume that matters in interna-
tional politics, but rather how deeply a country is embedded in the world trade system.34
31 Filip Abraham and Jan Van Hove, ‘The Rise of China: Prospects of Regional Trade Policy’,
Review of World Economics, Vol. 141, No. 3 (2005), pp. 486–509; Sanjaya Lall and Manuel
Albaladejo, ‘China’s Competitive Performance: A Threat to East Asian Manufactured
Exports’, World Development, Vol. 32, No. 9 (2004), pp. 1441–66; David Wall, ‘China As a
Trade Partner: Threat or Opportunity for the OECD?’, International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 2
(1996), pp. 329–44.
32 Ronald L. Breiger, ‘Structures of Economic Interdependence among Nations’ in Peter
Michael Blau and Robert King Merton, eds., Continuities in Structural Inquiry (London:
Sage, 1996); David Snyder and Edward L. Kick, ‘Structural Position in the World System and
Economic Growth, 1955-1970: A Multiple-Network Analysis of Transnational Interactions’,
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 84, No. 5 (1979), pp. 1096–124.
33 Timothy S. Rich and Sterling Recher, ‘Understanding Sino-African Relations: Neocolonialism
or a New Era’, Journal of International and Area Studies, Vol. 20, No.1 (2013), pp. 61–76;
Jedrzej Frynas and Manuel Paulo, ‘A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political,
and Business Perspectives’, African Affairs, Vol. 106, No. 423 (2006), pp. 229–51; Michael
Meidan, ‘China’s Africa Policy: Business Now, Politics Later’, Asian Perspective, Vol. 30, No.
4 (2006), pp. 69–73; David Zweig and Bi Jianhai, ‘China’s Global Hunt for Energy’, Foreign
Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 5 (2005), pp. 25–38.
34 Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Alexander Montgomery, ‘War, Trade, and Distrust: Why Trade
Agreements Don’t Always Keep the Peace’, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol.
Different network positions are associated with different perceptions, incentives, and be-
haviours. Modern network analysis provides delicate theory on how the centre-periphery
position affects an actor’s preferences, choices, and behaviour. Early studies in the network
analysis literature are interested in ‘structural equivalence’ as an important origin of homo-
geneity, and structural equivalence is measured through the identical ties (relations) of two
nodes in a network.35 Structural equivalence between two actors thus helps predict similar-
ities in their preferences, attitudes, and behaviours.36 Maoz, Kuperman, Terris, and
Talmud focus on structural equivalence, and empirically illustrate that structural equiva-
lence leads to convergence of foreign policy preferences and consequently reduces the pro-
pensity to conflict with each other.37
However, structural equivalence is a dyadic concept and does not well capture the
meaning of structural position. Mizruchi points out that simultaneous influence in the net-
work has a more important effect on convergence of attitudes or behaviour between dyads
than mutual impact.38 Against the dyadic concept of ‘structural equivalence’, Mizruchi de-
fines the network equivalence of nodes as ‘role equivalence’, and focuses on equivalence of
the centre-periphery position. Many ensuing studies have since been devoted to examining
the structures, dynamics, and relations of core and periphery.39 Network analysis defines
the ‘core’ as a set of densely connected nodes forming a central group in a network, and
‘periphery’ as the margin of a network with nodes sparsely connected. The peripheral nodes
may be connected to the core but are not part of it. Being part of the core with high central-
ity means the ‘potential importance, influence, and prominence of an actor in a network’.40
The centre-periphery distinction can be treated as either dichotomous or continuous, empir-
ically represented by classifying the core from the periphery or by decreasing levels of cen-
trality from core nodes to peripheral ones.41Accordingly, the core-periphery dichotomy can
be empirically identified using cluster analysis, while the continuous measure of centrality
29, No. 3 (2012), pp. 257–78; Zeev Maoz, Ranan D. Kuperman, Lesley Terris, and Ilan Talmud,
‘Structural Equivalence and International Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50,
No. 5 (2006), pp. 1–26; Zeev Maoz, Lesley Terris, Ranan D. Kuperman, and Ilan Talmud,
‘Network Centrality and International Conflict, 1816-2001: Does it Pay to Be Important?’,
Working Paper, 2004.
35 Francois Lorrain and Harrison C. White, ‘Structural Equivalence of Individuals in Social
Networks’, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Vol. 1, No.1 (1971), pp. 49–80.
36 Ronald S. Burt, ‘Cohesion Versus Structural Equivalence as a Basis for Network
Subgroups’, in Michael J. Minor and Ronald S. Burt, eds., Applied Network Analysis
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983).
37 Maoz, Kuperman, Terris and Talmud, ‘Structural Equivalence and International Conflict’.
38 Mark S. Mizruchi, ‘Cohesion, Equivalence, and Similarity of Behavior: A Theoretical and
Empirical Assessment’, Social Networks, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1993), pp. 275–307.
39 Peter Csenmely, Andras London, Ling-Yun Wu, and Brian Uzzi, ‘Structure and Dynamics of
Core/Periphery Networks’, Journal of Complex Networks, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2013), pp. 93–123;
Daniel A. Hohman and Adam Szeidl, ‘Core and Periphery in Networks’, Journal of Economic
Theory, Vol. 139, No. 1 (2008), pp. 295–309.
40 Linton C. Freeman, ‘Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification’, Social
Networks, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1978), pp. 215–39.
41 Liaquat Hossain, ‘Effect of Organisational Position and Network Centrality on Project
Coordination’, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27, No. 7 (2009), pp. 680–
can be defined and calculated in several ways. Regardless of whether it is used as a dichot-
omous or continuous variable and how the variable is measured, the core-periphery pos-
ition is essentially not an isolated or individual attribute but a structural feature of a node
embedded in its system.42 The structural centre-periphery position affects a node’s incen-
tives, preferences, and choices. Applications in social sciences of the core-periphery role
equivalence include studies on individual inventive incentives,43 firms’ tendency towards
coordination,44 and the worldwide spread of central bank independence.45
China’s economic ascendancy is essentially a rapid increase of prominence and influ-
ence in the global economic system. Its increasingly dense connections to the economic
‘core’ gradually move China towards it to become part of it. Consequently, China’s pref-
erences, attributes, and incentives may gradually diverge from those at the periphery,
which exerts profound impact on their foreign policy alignment. Some scholars have al-
ready argued, though not all from the perspective of network analysis, that with the in-
crease of China’s economic prominence, China behaves less like a developing country and
more like a developed country, such as in UN peacekeeping operations.46 We may call
this the ‘structural alienation effect’, which predicts that when China’s economic position
in the centre-periphery structure becomes more differentiated from that of developing
countries, the structural divergence leads to more heterogeneous attitudes, preferences,
and behaviour, which enlarges their foreign policy distance and decreases their foreign
policy alignment.
However, although China has moved to the core of the world economy, it is far from a
core member of the international political system, since the current political core is based
on the US-led liberal democratic order and consists of Western democratic countries.
Scholars and analysts, inductively or deductively, maintain that China’s rapid increase of
economic prominence has generated tension between its economic rise and its second-rate
political influence. Although China is now a central player and has global influence in the
global economic system, it is still a ‘lonely’ and ‘partial’ power in the political sense, faced
with treacherous obstacles when seeking great power status in international politics.47 In
89; Hohman and Szeidl, ‘Core and Periphery in Networks’; Fatherine Faust, ‘Centrality in
Affiliation Networks’, Social Networks, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1997), pp. 157–91.
42 Faust, ‘Centrality in Affiliation Networks’, pp. 157–91.
43 Jukka-Pekka Salmenkaita, ‘Intangible Capital in Industrial Research: Effects of Network
Position on Individual Inventive Productivity’, in Richard A. Bettis, ed., Strategy in Transition
(Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
44 Hossain, ‘Effect of Organisational Position and Network Centrality on Project Coordination’,
pp. 680–89.
45 Simone Polillo and Mauro F. Guillen, ‘Globalization Pressures and the State: The Worldwide
Spread of Central Bank Independence’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 110, No. 6
(2005), pp. 1764–802.
46 Staehle, ‘China’s Shifting Attitude towards United Nations Peacekeeping Operation’, pp.
631–55.
47 David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
addition, the power transition theory believes that this tension stemming from status incon-
sistency poses the danger of war between the rising power and the incumbent hegemon.48
Coping with the pressure of solving its status inconsistency problem is not always a de-
structive path for the rising power. Sociological studies on status inconsistency problems
suggest how structural or normative contradictions affect an actor’s behaviour or choices.49
According to social identity theory, actors can choose between three different ways to solve
this problem, depending on the permeability of the current dominant social club. The three
options are: social mobility; social competition; and social creativity.50 Social mobility
refers to the strategy of emulation. When an actor is faced with status inconsistency, it can
emulate the norms, values, and behaviours of the actors in the higher status group to in-
crease the possibility of being accepted and admitted by this dominant group. The second
strategy is ‘social competition’, where an actor tries to match or even surpass the higher sta-
tus group by competing with the dominant group as an outsider. The third strategy for an
actor to solve its status inconsistency problem is ‘social creativity’—an actor ‘reframes a
negative attribute as positive or stresses achievement in a different domain’.51
Owing to China’s deep integration into the global economy, the economic system im-
poses constraints on China’s choices as regards seeking great power status, yet also provides
great opportunities for China’s economic ascendancy. The social competition strategy is
too costly for China as an open economy if its foreign policy disrupts trade flows and its
other external economic connections. As Breslin points out, ‘engaging the global economy
has been a key source of economic growth (thus helping to maintain regime stability), and
establishing China’s credentials as a responsible global actor is seen as a means of ensuring
continued access to what China needs’.52 This is why those who admit the profound impli-
cations of complex economic interdependence believe that since China adopts the social
mobility strategy in the economic dimension, China would gradually accept the political di-
mension of the US-led liberal democratic order, and China’s foreign policy will eventually
converge with the political dominant group.
48 Renato Corbetta, Thomas J. Volgy, and J. Patrick Rhamey Jr., ‘Major Power Status (In)
Consistency and Political Relevance in International Relations Studies’, Peace Economics,
Peace Science and Public Policy, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2013), pp. 291–307; Thomas J. Volgy, Renato
Corbetta, Keith A. Grant, and Ryan G. Baird, Major Powers and the Quest for Status in
International Politics: Global and Regional Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011).
49 Sheldon Stryker and Anne Statham Macke, ‘Status Inconsistency and Role Conflict’, Annual
Review of Sociology, Vol. 4 (1978), pp. 57–90; Elton E. Jackson and Richard F. Curtis, ‘Effects
of Vertical Mobility and Status Inconsistency: A Body of Negative Evidence’, American
Sociological Review, Vol. 37, No. 6 (1972), pp. 701–13.
50 Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, ‘An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict’, in William G.
Austin and Stephen Worchel, eds., The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations
(Monterey: Brooks/Cole, 1979); Henri Tajfel, ‘The Psychological Structure of Intergroup
Relations’, in Henri Tajfel, ed., Differentiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social
Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic, 1978).
51 Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, ‘Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian
Responses to U.S. Primacy’, International Security, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2010), pp. 66–67.
52 Shaun Breslin, ‘China’s Emerging Global Role: Dissatisfied Responsible Great Power’,
Politics, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2010), p. 52.
Unfortunately, the current political system is much less permeable to China’s ascend-
ancy than the economic system. Although the social mobility strategy works for China in
the economic dimension, it is simply infeasible in the political arena. China’s political re-
gime and value system are intrinsically different from those of western liberal democracies,
and these political differences make China and the West mutually cautious of each other. It
is unlikely that China would be willing or able to adopt Western liberal democratic political
and social values in the short term. By the same token, Western countries are reluctant to
sincerely welcome a politically heterogeneous China into their ‘mainstream elite club’.
China must hence forge its own path by crafting its own social creativity strategy to cope
with the status inconsistency pressure.
When we look at the world through the lens of network analysis, the ‘structural holes’
in the centre-periphery system provide China with ‘betweenness’ power to increase its polit-
ical prominence, in that the ‘holes’ enable China to bridge the gap and connect the loose at-
tachments between the centre and the periphery. In the terminology of network analysis,
‘betweenness’ power lies in the leverage gained by a node through connections with margi-
nalized or sparsely connected nodes within a network. Because such a ‘bridge’ node pro-
vides valuable access to the central part of the network from the periphery, and vice-versa,
it holds influence and power. In other words, the node does not need to be at the core to
enjoy high-level prominence and important influence.53 The exclusive aspects within
China’s unique relations with North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and other such politically per-
ipheral countries provide examples of how ‘brokerage power’ is created and enhanced by
ties with marginal nodes. This strategy is socially creative in the sense that, by turning its
transitory and unstable identity into a positive one, China utilizes its revolution-traditional
political identity as a ‘third world country’ in the political domain and as a ‘developing
country’ in the economic domain to increase its ‘betweenness centrality’ in the ‘centre-per-
iphery’ network system. Besides such extremely isolated states, this strategy can be applied
to other countries as long as they are remotely connected to the West in the political and
economic realms. The gain of brokerage power for China varies depending on how margi-
nalized that developing country is. This strategic consideration affects the incentive, prefer-
ences, and attitudes of China’s foreign policy decision-making, though likely in a direction
opposite to the structural force.
Figure 7 illustrates the two interactive mechanisms we propose to explain China’s net-
work strategy of its embedded rise through globalization: the ‘structural alienation effect’
refers to the expected decrease of foreign policy alignment between the diverging centre-
periphery positions of China and of a developing country in the global economic network,
while the ‘strategic affinity effect’ is China’s strategic alignment with a peripheral country
for the purpose of increasing China’s network power in international politics. The two
types of effects go in opposite directions and moderate each other at the preferences, incen-
tives, and attributes link in the causal chain. The observed variation in foreign policy align-
ment between China and developing countries depends on how the two effects jointly
shape the underlying incentives, and which mechanism is the dominant one.
53 Ronald S. Burt, ‘The Network Structure of Social Capital’, Research in Organizational

Behavior, Vol. 22 (2000), pp. 345–423; Structural Holes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992); Phillip Bonacich, ‘Power and Centrality: A Family of Measures’, American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 5 (1987), pp. 1170–182.
Fig. 7. Theory: Structural Alienation and Strategic Affinity.
Empirical Analysis of China’s Network Strategy

We use data from the voting records of 161 developing countries at the UNGA from 1994
to 2012 to test the proposed theory. As the sample time period is mainly determined by
data availability, the sample up to the year 2012 does not reflect the latest changes in
China’s foreign policy. There is a possibility that China’s rising strategy may have gradually
or even dramatically changed under Xi’s leadership. Therefore, our theory is retrospective
in essence, and the ending year of 2012 in the empirical analysis may be suitable for exclud-
ing any likely structural break occurring around that time. In this section, we first explain
the strategy to measure foreign policy alignment and centre-periphery position in the world
trade network. Then we specify a hierarchical model to analyse the data, test the theoretical
argument, and interpret the empirical evidence.
Foreign Policy Alignment and UNGA Votes

We chose to use UNGA votes to measure China’s foreign policy alignment, because regard-
less of whether an UNGA resolution is procedural or substantive, the votes of Member
States arguably reflect their foreign policy position in international affairs. Another advan-
tage of using UNGA votes is that UNGA resolutions are unbinding. A country’s UNGA
votes may be a more accurate reflection of its foreign policy position compared to its votes
in other institutions with more teeth, in which strategic voting is more likely and votes may
be less likely to reflect genuine policy positions.
The UNGA votes contain valuable information for inferring countries’ foreign policy
preferences and comparing their convergence or divergence, but aggregating methods are
needed to create appropriate measures. The most widely applied measures of foreign policy
affinity based on the UNGA votes are dyadic measures, such as Kendall’s Tau-b indicator,54
54 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, ‘Measuring Systemic Polarity’, Journal of Conflict Resolution,

Vol. 19, No. 2 (1975), pp. 187–216.
Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient,55 the index of agreement,56 and the S score.57
As Voeten points out, the dyadic similarity measures are based on the implicit assumption
that UNGA votes are dyadic.58 But in reality, countries in the UNGA do not cast votes to
express whether or not they agree with the position of another country regarding a reso-
lution; instead, votes are cast monotonically to express countries’ preferences and policy
standings.59 More important, the dyadic similarity scores are heavily affected by different
agenda settings; the agenda in a particular year can systemically shift the similarity scores
even if the state’s foreign policy preferences do not change either in the absolute or relative
sense.60
For the present research, the ideal point is a more appropriate measure than the dyadic
measures. In the aforementioned theory, China’s foreign policy alignment with a develop-
ing country is the response variable, and how peripheral a country is can be measured by
the distance between the ideal point of a developing country and the dominant group repre-
sented by the United States or the OECD average. It requires the two distances to be com-
parable and consistent in the same policy space. The S score, or other dyadic measures,
speaks only to how similar two countries’ preferences are, but the similarity between the
United States and a country may not be comparable with that between China and the coun-
try because the similarity of the two pairs of states may not be in the same policy space.
The estimated ideal points of all UN Member States are located in the ‘conservative-liberal’
spectrum, and distances between different pairs of states are comparable. In addition, the
overtime variation of ideal points of foreign policies are bridged by common resolutions
across time, which means that the evolution of a country’s foreign policy position can be
observed from the change of ideal point in the same policy space regardless of the changed
agenda setting. More important, the ideal point measure is an estimation of underlying pol-
icy positions based on votes on all resolutions in each year. In each vote, China may have
one policy profile to maximize its utility, but China cannot have N (the number of all de-
veloping states in all votes) policy profiles. The distance between ideal points based on each
year’s votes can better aggregate the information than the dyadic measures based on the fre-
quency of vote coincidence to reflect how China, by carefully adjusting its vote on each in-
dividual resolution, forms its political position relative to each individual country.
However, the ideal point distance measure is not perfect, since any aggregation and dimen-
sion reduction would lose information in the raw data. But without a better solution to our
55 Erik Gartzke, ‘Kant We all Just Get Along? Opportunity, Willingness, and the Origins of the
Democratic Peace’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1–27;
Erik Gartzke, ‘Preferences and the Democratic Peace’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.
44, No. 2 (2000), pp. 191–212.
56 Arend Lijphart, ‘The Analysis of Bloc Voting in the General Assembly: A Critique and a
Proposal’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1963), pp. 902–17.
57 Curtis S. Signorino and Jeffrey M. Ritter, ‘Tau-b or not Tau-b: Measuring the Similarity of
Foreign Policy Positions’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1999), pp. 115–44.
58 Voeten, ‘Clashes in the Assembly’, pp. 185–215.
59 Michael A. Bailey, Anton Strezhnev, and Erik Voeten, ‘Estimating Dynamic State
Preferences from United Nations Voting Data’; Benjamin E. Lauderdale, ‘Unpredictable
Voters in Ideal Point Estimation’, Political Analysis, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2010), pp. 151–71.
60 Bailey, Strezhnev, and Voeten, ‘Estimating Dynamic State Preferences from United Nations
Voting Data’.
knowledge, we choose to use this measure for a preliminary empirical test of the proposed
theory.
Centre-periphery Position in Global Trade Network

A state’s connectedness in the global economic network can be measured by trade flows, bi-
lateral investment treaties, or preferential trade agreements.61 This article measures coun-
tries’ centre-periphery structural positions in the world trade network defined by trade
flows. We measure the centre-periphery position divergence by comparing the eigenvector
centrality scores of two nodes. We use the trade network to represent the global economic
network, not only because of the importance of trade, but also to avoid the aggregations of
different networks of global economy.
Among different centrality measures in network analysis, we choose eigenvector central-
ity to measure centre-periphery positions of nodes, the reason being that the eigenvector
centrality defines centrality differently from accessibility. The other options, such as degree
centrality and strength centrality, are essentially local measures of centrality and only take
the direct links into account.62 The philosophy behind eigenvector centrality is that what
nodes are to be connected to matters more than the number of directly or indirectly con-
nected nodes. For example, in the trade network, a country with a high level of eigenvector
centrality is connected to many important countries that are also connected with many
other important countries. Therefore, those countries belong to a club of important nodes,
forming a centre of the global trade network.
Control Variables and Model Specification

We include several control variables, which may affect the foreign policy alignment
of China with developing countries and, at the same time, be correlated with their
centre-periphery positions in the world trade network. The material capabilities of a
state may affect its foreign policy preferences. At the same time, a state with similar lev-
els of material capabilities may be likely to have similar structural positions in the
world trade network. Hence, we include two variables that capture material capability
61 Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Alexander Montgomery, ‘Globalization and the Social Power
Politics of International Economic Networks’, in Miles Kahler, ed., Networked Politics:
Agency, Power, and Governance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015); Hafner-Burton,
Kahler, and Montgomery, ‘Network Analysis for International Relations’; C. Umana Dajud,
‘Political Proximity and International Trade’, Economics & Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2013), pp.
283–312; Flores-Macias and Kreps, ‘The Foreign Policy Consequences of Trade’; Mark S.
Manger, Mark A. Pickup, and Tom A. B. Snijder, ‘A Hierarchy of Preferences A Longitudinal
Network Analysis: Approach to PTA Formation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 56, No. 5
(2012), pp. 853–78; Dorussen and Ward, ‘Intergovernmental Organizations and the Kantian
Peace A Network Perspective’, pp. 189–212; Katja B. Kleinberg, and Benjamin O. Fordham,
‘Trade and Foreign Policy Attitudes’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 54, No. 5 (2010), pp.
687–714; Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Centrality in Politics: How Networks Confer Influence’,
Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Political Networks Conference, Duke University, 19–21
May, 2010; Zachary Elkins, Andrew T. Guzman, and Beth A. Simmons, ‘Competing for
Capital: The Diffusion of Bilateral Investment Treaties, 1960-2000’, International
Organization, Vol. 60, No. 4 (2006), pp. 811–46.
62 Jackson, Social and Economic Networks.
and its change, namely, the CINC indicator63 and GDP growth rate. The CINC data
are from the COW database. GDP growth rate reflects the speed of capability change,
and the data are from the World Bank. Because the response variable is about diver-
gence, we use the difference between CINC and the GDP growth rates of China and a
developing country.
Another potential confounder can be countries’ shared membership in international
governmental organizations. This is the widely applied measure of inter-state ties that may
affect states’ attitudes and behaviour.64 Mutual memberships in the IGO network can
imply communication, socialization, or internalization of international norms and orders,
which would make countries’ foreign policy preferences converge. We calculate the number
of shared IGO memberships of China and each developing country based on the COW
database.
As suggested by the commerce peace theory, economic openness would affect a
country’s foreign policy preferences. A more open economy is likely to have a foreign policy
standing different from that of a closed one. At the same time, open economies may have
positions in the world trade network more similar to one another than to closed economies.
We use the percentage of trade to GDP as the measure of economic openness. Furthermore,
‘political gap’ may be another important predictor of countries’ foreign policy alignment.
Therefore, to control for the domestic ‘political gap’, we use democratic scores in the
Polity V database.65 We also control for the effect of geopolitics using region dummies.
Finally, since China’s foreign policy experienced a gradual adjustment in the 1990s after
the ‘Tiananmen Square Incident’, we construct a dummy variable to accommodate the un-
observed and complicated factors that moved Chinese foreign policy standings away from
almost all countries in those years. In addition, a lag of the dependence variable to control
for policy inertia is included. The descriptive statistics of the variables are reported in
Table 1.
The data are time-series cross-sectional and essentially multilevel data.66 We apply a
hierarchical model with the following specification:
63 David J. Singer, ‘Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of

States, 1816-1985’; Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, ‘Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and
Major Power War, 1820-1965’, pp. 19–48.
64 Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery, ‘Network Analysis for International Relations’, pp.
559–92.
65 Elkins, Guzman, and Simmons, ‘Competing for Capital’, pp. 811–46.
66 Xun Pang, ‘Varying Responses to Common Shocks and Complex Cross-Sectional
Dependence: Dynamic Multilevel Modeling with Multifactor Error Structures for Time-
Series Cross-Sectional Data’, Political Analysis, Vol. 22, No, 4 (2014), pp. 464–96; Xun Pang,
‘Modeling Heterogeneity and Serial Correlation in Binary Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data:
A Bayesian Multilevel Model with AR(p) Errors’, Political Analysis, Vol. 18, No, 4 (2010), pp.
470–98; Andrew Gelman and Jennifer Hill, Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/
Hierarchical Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics
Min Max Mean Median SD
Foreign Policy Alignment 0.000 3.972 0.656 0.439 0.660

CPPDa 0.023 1.267 0.581 0.574 0.230
PPb (to US) 0.114 4.871 3.066 3.176 0.753
Political periphery (to US)
PP (to OECD) 0.000 0.541 1.227 1.414 0.740
Political periphery (to OECD average)
Mutual IGO membership 1.000 69.000 36.745 35.000 9.810
CINC gap 0.072 0.284 0.178 0.176 0.034
Political gap 0.000 20.000 9.344 11.00 5.975
Openness gap 0.034 922.100 45.160 31.860 51.665
Gap of development rate 0.000 96.980 6.242 5.546 4.891
a
CPPD stands for centre/periphery position difference between China and a developing country, measured by
the dyadic eigenvector centrality difference.
b
PP stands for political periphery of a developing country.
log ðIdealpoint DistanceÞit ¼ a þ ai þ at þ qðIdealpoing DistanceÞi; t1
þb1 ðCentrality DifferenceÞit þ b2 ðIdealpoint Distance to US or OECDÞit

þcðCentrality DifferenceÞit ðIdealpoint Distance to US or OECDÞit
bðConstrol VariablesÞit þ it ;
The subscript i denotes a developing country i and t in year. This is a multilevel model
with country and year random intercepts, i and t.67 The term ‘centrality difference’ is
included to test the ‘structural alienation effect’. The ideal-point distance to the United
States measures how far a country is from the political centre, and is used to test the ‘stra-
tegic alignment effect’. The interactive term is to capture the proposed theory of the inter-
action of the ‘structure’ and ‘strategy’ mechanisms. The coefficient of b1 and b2 is the direct
effects of structural alienation and strategic alignment; ccaptures the interaction effect, and
b1 þ cðIdealpoint Distance to US or OECDÞ is the marginal effect of structural divergence
on foreign policy distance between China and developing countries, moderated by China’s
strategic consideration.
Empirical Results
Tables 2 and 3 report the estimates and standard errors of the coefficients based on four dif-
ferent model specifications. Model 1 is a multilevel model including only the primary ex-
planatory variables and varying intercepts to control for unobserved country and time
67 The hierarchical specification is very similar to the two-way fixed-effect panel model.
Different from the fixed-effect panel model, the estimates of the fixed-effect parameters in
the hierarchical model can be used to draw inference about heterogeneity across countries
and over time. In addition, the hierarchical model avoids the potential endogeneity problem
caused by the lagged dependent variable as a regressor in the fixed-effect panel model.
See Christopher H. Achen, ‘Why Lagged Dependent Variables Can Suppress the
Explanatory Power of Other Independent Variables’, Working Paper, 2001.
Table 2. Estimates and Standard Errors
Covariates Distance to United States To OECD
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Lag alignment 1.380 1.390 1.387 1.336

(0.062)*** (0.064)*** (0.065)*** (0.056)***
CPPDa 1.127 1.231 1.258 0.683
(0.318)*** (0.330)*** (0.335)*** (0.244)***
PPb 0.189 0.187 0.192 0.043
(0.083)*** (0.086)*** (0.086)*** (0.088)
CPPD PP 0.430 0.442 0.448 0.567
(0.090)*** (0.090)*** (0.091)*** (0.105)***
Mutual IGO membership 0.001 0.001
(0.002) (0.002)
CINC gap 2.988 3.097 2.930
(1.371)*** (1.394)*** (1.389)***
Political gap 0.004 0.004 0.007
(0.004) (0.004) (0.004)
Openness gap 0.000 0.000
(0.000) (0.000)
Gap of development rate 0.003 0.003 0.004
(0.003) (0.003) (0.003)
Dummy 1990s 0.211 0.221 0.174
(0.160) (0.162) (0.162)
Constant 2.377 1.755 1.745 1.030
(0.322)*** (0.403)*** (0.415)*** (0.338)***
N 2762 2762 2762 2762
N-Country 161 161 161 161
N-Year 18 18 18 18
AIC 6599 6619 6646 6607
BIC 6759 6802 6841 6803
logLik 3273 3278 3290 3271
Deviance 6491 6484 6483 6446
a
CPPD stands for centre/periphery position difference between China and a developing country.
b
PP stands for political periphery of a developing country.
b
***significant at 1%.
heterogeneity. Models 2 and 3 add more control variables, and Model 4 uses the alternative
measure of political periphery as the ideal point distance between a developing country and
OECD average.
The empirical results show the interactive effect of the ‘structural alienation effect’ and
the ‘strategic alignment effect’—in all models; the estimate of the interactive term is signifi-
cant at the 0.01 level. In addition, the estimates have a negative sign, implying that the two
mechanisms go in opposite directions and offset each other’s effect to a certain degree.
Figure 8 is based on Model 3, the model with all control variables and with political periph-
ery defined against the US foreign policy ideal point. The figure graphically demonstrates
the marginal effect on foreign policy alignment of the divergence of the centre-periphery
positions between China and developing countries in the trade network. The figure in the
Table 3. Regional Differences
Covariates Distance to United States To OECD
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Central America 0.403 0.411 0.412 0.350

(0.160)*** (0.162)*** (0.162)*** (0.166)***
Central Asia 0.230 0.188 0.188 0.066
(0.181) (0.185) (0.185) (0.190)
Eastern Africa 0.114 0.121 0.113 0.098
(0.126) (0.127) (0.127) (0.130)
Eastern Asia 0.228 0.239 0.237 0.188
(0.328) (0.330) (0.332) (0.338)
Eastern Europe 0.070 0.102 0.099 0.379
(0.172) (0.173) (0.174) (0.182)
Melanesia 0.329 0.327 0.324 0.205
(0.196) (0.197) (0.198) (0.203)
Micronesia 0.347 0.378 0.403 0.476
(0.207) (0.209) (0.211) (0.210)***
Middle Africa 0.180 0.200 0.198 0.211
(0.149) (0.151) (0.152) (0.155)
Northern Africa 0.254 0.221 0.240 0.422
(0.173) (0.175) (0.178) (0.181)
Northern Europe 0.233 0.244 0.253 0.606
(0.234) (0.236) (0.237) (0.246)
Polynesia 0.364 0.347 0.349 0.163
(0.228) (0.230) (0.231) (0.237)
South America 0.209 0.214 0.226 0.190
(0.137) (0.138) (0.140) (0.143)
South-Eastern Asia 0.004 0.017 0.028 0.058
(0.141) (0.142) (0.144) (0.148)
Southern Africa 0.365 0.355 0.363 0.354
(0.179)*** (0.181)*** (0.182)*** (0.186)***
Southern Asia 0.304 0.333 0.324 0.246
(0.148)*** (0.150)*** (0.151)*** (0.155)
Southern Europe 0.051 0.066 0.070 0.414
(0.170) (0.171) (0.172) (0.182)***
Western Africa 0.343 0.349 0.338 0.314
(0.128)*** (0.128)*** (0.129)*** (0.132)***
Western Asia 0.013 0.040 0.034 0.002
(0.130) (0.132) (0.133) (0.136)
Western Europe 0.155 0.189 0.220 0.590
(0.271) (0.273) (0.276) (0.286)
b
***significant at 1%.
left-hand panel suggests that the ‘strategic affinity effect’ overwhelms the ‘structural alien-
ation effect’ when a developing country stands far away from the political centre led by the
United States. On this occasion, the developing country’s peripheral network position pro-
vides China with a structural hole, and China’s foreign policy location is driven towards
2.0
1.5
0.2
Marginal Effect of Foreign Policy Distance to US
Marginal Effect of Trade Network Role Difference
1.0
0.0
0.5
0.0
-0.2
-0.5
-0.4
-1.0
-1.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2

Foreign Policy Distance to the U.S. Trade Network Role Difference
Fig. 8. Marginal Effect of Centre-periphery Position Difference.
the ideal point of the country for the strategic consideration of ‘betweenness’ power in
international politics, holding all other things constant.
The structural alienating effect is offset by the strategic alignment effect, and even
changes the sign when a country’s foreign policy standing is far enough from the centre of
the international political system. For those countries with foreign policy ideal points close
to the United States (their ideal point distance from the United States is smaller than two),
the marginal ‘structural alienation effect’ is generally positive: the more divergent of struc-
tural positions in the trade network between China and developing countries, the less
aligned their foreign policies. But when a developing country is very much politically margi-
nalized (the distance to the United States is greater than two), China’s strategic consider-
ation of ‘bridging the gap to increase influence’ is so strong that the divergence of economic
centrality even strengthens China’s foreign policy alignment with those countries.
The graph on the right-hand side of Figure 8 shows the marginal effect of the political
peripheral position of a developing country on its foreign policy alignment with China.
When the developing country is as central as China in the global trade network, the more
distant its foreign policy ideal point is from that of the United States, and the less aligned its
foreign policy is with China. However, this scenario is very rare in reality because there is
almost no developing country whose trade centrality is at the same level as China. In the
sample, only South Korea and Singapore are categorized as developing countries (defined
as non-OECD countries) in 1995 with a trade network centrality gap of less than 0.1 with
China. As shown in the figure, when the centrality gap is between 0.1 and 0.74, the political
distance of a developing country from the United States does not have a statistically signifi-
cant effect on foreign policy alignment between China and developing countries. Only
when developing countries are at the economic periphery (centrality gap is greater than
0.74) would China take advantage of the developing country’s political difference with the
United States. This difference is used as a strategic ‘gap’ for China—that is, the policy dis-
tance from the United States brings China and a developing country politically closer when
the developing country is also economically disconnected from the centre.
Regarding the control variables, a material capability gap between developing countries
and China has a significant effect on their foreign policy alignment—a larger CINC gap
drives the two countries closer in their foreign policies, holding all other factors constant.
Because the economic structural positions and the country’s political distance from the
United States are both held constant, the effect could be interpreted as one caused by
weaker developing countries more likely to side with a more powerful China. The empirical
analysis does not find evidence to support the oft-suggested effects of mutual membership
in inter-governmental organizations. A political gap does not affect China’s foreign policy
alignment with a developing country, which echoes China’s emphasis that its foreign policy
aligns towards developing countries regardless of regime type. Economic growth rate differ-
ences do not distance China from a developing country, holding all other factors constant,
and neither is economic openness important to the foreign policy alignment of China with
developing countries. However, foreign policy alignment has strong inertia, and the foreign
policy distance in the previous year strongly and positively correlated with their current dis-
tance. Table 3 reports the region-specific effects. The regional effect of the Caribbean is set
as a baseline, and all the regional effects are relative to the Caribbean effect. Most notice-
ably in the table, the foreign policy distance between China and Central American countries
is significantly larger than it is between countries in other regions, holding other factors
constant. Developing countries in southern and western Africa have significantly shorter
distances from China in terms of their foreign policy standings than developing countries in
other regions do.
Figure 10 summarizes the estimates and 95%confidence intervals of the county- and
year-specific intercepts, which are included in the model in order to control for unobserved
country- and year-specific characteristics that may affect the response variable and become
correlated with the regressors. The figures show salient heterogeneity in both time and
space dimensions.
As indicated in Figure 9, there are several countries whose unobserved characteristics
enlarge the foreign policy distance from China, such as Cuba, Iran, Liberia, and Kiribati,
after controlling for bilateral political or economic relationships between China and them.
At the other extreme, countries such as St Lucia, Morocco, Israel, and Cambodia have
some country-specific attributes that determine that their locations in the political spectrum
are closer to that of China, holding all other variables constant. Among all the countries
highlighted here, Israel is the most interesting one, because Israel closely follows the United
States in UNGA voting, and the United States also votes in resolutions to support Israel’s
stance. But the empirical evidence shows that Israel, as a country, has certain special bonds
with China which are not captured by their observed connections or individual attributes.
Figure 10 shows that some unmeasured time-specific factors affect China’s foreign policy
alignment with developing countries. The time heterogeneity is salient, and might be caused
by the resolutions brought to vote in different years.
Conclusion
China has repeatedly and firmly emphasized its foreign policy standing as a developing
country and its affinity with the developing world. But at the same time, actively and deeply
integrated into the world trade network as China is, its structural position becomes increas-
ingly divergent from the rest of the developing world. This article is intended to understand
this sharp contrast, and proposes the theory of China’s network strategy of embedded rise.
1.0
IRAN
0.5
KIRIBATI
CUBA LIBERIA
Country-Specific Intercept
0.0
-0.5
ST LUCIA MOROCCO
CAMBODIA
-1.0
ISRAEL
-1.5
0 50 100 150
Developing Countries
Fig. 9. Summary of Estimates and Confidence Intervals of Country-specific Effects.

0.4
0.2
Year-Specific Intercept
0.0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
Fig. 10. Summary of Estimates and Confidence Intervals of Year-specific Effects.
It concludes that the two interacting and conflicting mechanisms, namely, the ‘structural
alienation effect’ and the ‘strategic affinity effect’, determine the direction and magnitude
of the effect on foreign policy alignment of trade position difference. One of the most im-
portant implications of China’s network strategy of embedded rise is that the discourse of
globalization and the interconnection of different policy domains set constraints on China,
but at the same time also provide it with opportunities to seek great power status via the
‘social creativity approach’. The empirical analysis in this study is preliminary and
heuristic. Future studies might take the network perspective to understand the rise of
China, and construct finer theories and conduct empirical analysis in a more disaggregated
manner. The most important task towards advancing the study might be to do surveys that
directly collect information about the change of incentives, preferences, and attitudes in
China’s foreign policy making, so providing the data crucial to a better empirical test of the
proposed theory with the interactive effect occurring at this link in the causal chain.
Acknowledgment
We thank: David Lake, Quan Li, Steven Chan, Dustin Tingley, Scott Krastner, Xuetong Yan for
comments, Jiayun Quan for research assistance, and the participants at the “The Rise of China:
Empirical Analysis” Conference held at Tsinghua University, July, 2014. This research project is
supported by Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program.

2017-China's Network Strategy For Seeking Greatness

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The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2017, 1–29

China’s Network Strategy for Seeking Great

*Corresponding author. Email: xpang@tsinghua.edu.cn

The Rise of China amid Globalization

China’s Economic Ascendancy as an Open Economy

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Fig. 1. China’s Globalization.

China’s Declaratory Unchanged Foreign Policy Standing

Strength (%) Centrality

1995 2000 2005 2010

Fig. 2. Centrality in World Trade Network.

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Level and Variation of State's Ideal Points (All States)

Czechoslovakia South Africa

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Fig. 5. Foreign Policy Distance between China and Selected Countries.

The Rise of China: Structure versus Strategy

Structure–Strategy Theory: A Network Strategy of Embedded Rise

53 Ronald S. Burt, ‘The Network Structure of Social Capital’, Research in Organizational

Fig. 7. Theory: Structural Alienation and Strategic Affinity.

Empirical Analysis of China’s Network Strategy

Foreign Policy Alignment and UNGA Votes

54 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, ‘Measuring Systemic Polarity’, Journal of Conflict Resolution,

Centre-periphery Position in Global Trade Network

Control Variables and Model Specification

63 David J. Singer, ‘Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics

Min Max Mean Median SD

Foreign Policy Alignment 0.000 3.972 0.656 0.439 0.660

log ðIdealpoint DistanceÞit ¼ a þ ai þ at þ qðIdealpoing DistanceÞi; t1

þb1 ðCentrality DifferenceÞit þ b2 ðIdealpoint Distance to US or OECDÞit

Table 2. Estimates and Standard Errors

Covariates Distance to United States To OECD

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Lag alignment 1.380 1.390 1.387 1.336

Table 3. Regional Differences

Covariates Distance to United States To OECD

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Central America 0.403 0.411 0.412 0.350

0 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2

Fig. 8. Marginal Effect of Centre-periphery Position Difference.

Fig. 9. Summary of Estimates and Confidence Intervals of Country-specific Effects.

1995 2000 2005 2010

Fig. 10. Summary of Estimates and Confidence Intervals of Year-specific Effects.

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