Beyond fledging and balancing : middle power's dual-track approach to China's rise

Abstract

This thesis exploresthe evolving dynamics of power transitions in the Asia-Pacific region, the riseof China, and its impact on other states’ threat perceptions and correspondingstrategic choices, with a particular focus on how regional middle powers, suchas Japan, Australia, and Taiwan, respond to China amid their changing threatperceptions of China’s rise from a theoretical perspective. The anarchicinternational system forces states to respond to power shifts to ensuresecurity. However, how middle powers choose their strategies is a subject ofacademic debate.

While hedging and thestructural realist balancing insights have been the primary perspectives inexplaining states’ responses to power shifts, particularly in the context ofChina’s rise, this thesis argues, however, that hedging is no longer a useful perspectiveto explain Japan, Australia, and Taiwan’s China policies, despite their currentresponses toward China exhibiting superficial behavioral similarities with thehedging approach, such as the co-presence of balancing and cooperation. Theirclear threat perception of China contradicts the theoretical underpinning ofhedging, which requires states’ uncertainty about the threats posed by risingpowers. However, many have mistakenly believed that hedging still defines theirChina policies due to the co-presence of balancing and cooperation. 

This thesis alsocritiques the structural realist insight as it fails to explain the continuedeconomic cooperation of these regional countries with China. According toKenneth Waltz, when states adopt hard balancing to deter threats posed byrising powers, they are also compelled to seek economic decoupling from oneanother to minimize their security vulnerabilities. Clearly, Japan, Australia,and Taiwan’s continued economic ties with China directly refute structuralrealist insight on states’ economic behaviors toward their security rivals.

To fill the void leftby both the hedging approach and structural realism in explaining Japan,Australia, and Taiwan’s responses to China’s rise, this thesis proposes a newdual-track approach to explain how states respond to a rising power incontemporary international politics. It posits that states can simultaneouslypursue hard balancing and profit-driven economic cooperation toward risingpowers even after establishing threat certainty. While hard balancing is usedto deter threats, gains from economic cooperation enhance the aggregate powerof states and their long-term defense capabilities. This is a strategicallycoherent policy with no conflict between the balancing and cooperation elementsof states in responding to threatening rising powers. 

The findings of thisthesis demonstrate that after abandoning hedging due to the certainty of thethreat posed by a rising power, a pure balancing posture is not the only policyalternative. Instead, a dual-track approach, characterized by both hard balancingand profit-driven economic cooperation, now defines the policies of middlepowers toward China, as shown by Japan, Australia, and Taiwan. This dual-trackapproach has been overlooked by academic studies in recent years.

To conclude, thisthesis advances realist international relations theory by offering a dual-trackapproach to explain how middle powers respond to rising powers in contemporarypower transitions.