Chinese Revolution

Introduction

Since 1949, and certainly following the Korean War in the early 1950s, as the new China in Communist garb began to appear on the horizon as a specter of increasing concern to U.S. decision makers, a new breed of China watchers periodically searched for a meaningful and systematic way to help in deciphering the new China beyond the traditional methodology identified with the dubious profession known as Sinology (Pye 1978; Hsiung 1978a; Hsiung 1993).

The study of China's foreign relations (as distinct from domestic politics), however, remained methodologically under-developed, except among a handful of China experts, until the late 1960s. So concluded the joint SSRC-ACLS Steering Group on Chinese Foreign Policy and International Relations, which under the able leadership of Allen S. Whiting, undertook a survey of the field in 1973-1975. The Steering Group convened a three-day workshop, August 12-14, 1976, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to review the findings and exchange notes. One major concern was: What can the behavioralist methodology, newly introduced into the international relations (IR) field, do for the study of Chinese foreign policy, and vice versa (Whiting 1977; Pollack 1975; Hsiung 1978b; Hsiung 1980)?

Progress was made in subsequent studies that lent greater methodological sophistication to the study of China's foreign relations (e.g., Hutchison 1976; Maddox 1977; Harding 1994; Kim 1998; Shambaugh 2004/2005), and on China-U.S. relations (e.g., Jiang 1998; Ross 1995; Christensen 2006). Greater use of IR theory in assessing China as an actor in regional or global contexts also appeared (e.g., Johnson 2003).

Foregoing ad hoc explanations and displaying originality, some writers (Dittmer 1981; Hsiung 1985) even experimented with game-theoretical analysis in the study of the “strategic triangle” involving the interactions among China, the U.S., and the Soviet Union that unfolded in the 1980s. These represented an inquisitive attempt to discover the usefulness of deductive theory as can be applied to explicating China's behavior within the strategic triadic relationship.

Main Body

From another tack, other scholars began to raise questions regarding the universal explanatory power of IR theory after examining the body of very different patterns in ancient international relations under the Chinese imperial order (Kang 2001; Hui 2004). David Kang (2003) even broached the question of a “need for new analytical frameworks” in mainstream IR theory, which relied almost exclusively on European history, and as such cannot explain the behavior of a re-surging China and that of Asian neighbors in reaction to China's re-ascent.

It remains true, nevertheless, that not until more recently was any systematic review of the existing IR theory attempted in ascertaining its ability to account for the very different behavioral patterns of a China on the comeback track. Scholars did not begin to rethink IR theory until they realized that despite its ascendancy in power, China has not been balancing against the U.S. hegemonic power, as many leading IR theorists predicted; and its behavior has been seen as “bandwagoning” instead. Nevertheless, a broad review of theory had to await a substantial change in the intellectual climate among IR scholars, including ...