Ascending China and the Hegemonic United States: Economically Based Cooperation or Strategic Power Politics? (Globale Gesellschaft und internationale Beziehungen)

Jörg Vogelmann looks into one of the central political and economic relationships of the 21st century. The author finds Sino-U.S. ties marked by strong, slightly asymmetric (economic) interdependence, a relatively fast economic power transition under way as well as slow to moderate shifts in military power. He develops a neoliberal and a neorealist grand theory picture of Sino-U.S. and international relations, and empirically verifies these influential perspectives by analyzing post-Cold War Chinese and U.S. foreign policies in the major flashpoints the Taiwan and the North Korea issue. Despite and due to globalization, ties between ascending China (as a potential regional or once even global U.S. challenger) and the hegemonic United States may likely continue to be marked by strategic power politics - and will decisively affect trans- and international relations.