The Limits of Chinese Influence in East Asia: Status Seeking and Rising Power Stagnation

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies hosts a talk by Björn Jerdén on the falling influence of China in East Asia.

Contrary to many earlier expectations, China’s influence over the security and alignment policies of its East Asian neighbors has weakened in recent years. Regular outbursts of rigid and vitriolic official statements, high-handed and capricious policy measures, and a belligerent and insular domestic foreign policy discourse feed into misgivings that China’s rise will be less peaceful than advertised. Other states in the region are thus presented with compelling reasons to keep Beijing at a distance and strengthen the US military presence. In this talk, I use International Relations theory on status and recognition to advance a new explanation of China’s failed reassurance attempts, and hence its limited influence in the East Asian security system. I revise previous research on China's status seeking to argue that China primarily pursues higher status by emulating US great power behavior in search for recognition as an equal by the United States. The interactive dynamics of status seeking—China’s unsuccessful enactment of a first-tier great power role and the US lack of reciprocal recognition—inhibits China ability to reassure its neighbors. Put differently, China’s desire for becoming a first-tier great power plays an important part in preventing it from reaching this long-standing objective.

About the Presenter:

Björn Jerdén is a PhD Candidate at Stockholm University and an Associate Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. In 2015-2016 he is a Princeton-Harvard China and the World Predoctoral Affiliate with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.