Talk is Not Cheap: China's Assurance and Reassurance Strategy in East Asia

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the conditions under which weaker states balance against or bandwagon with a strong state. China's rise provides an opportunity to examine this question, as over the last two decades, China has experienced one of the most dramatic and sustained periods of economic growth of any great power in world history. This has led to debates in both academic and policy circles about whether China will pose a threat to the United States and its regional allies in Asia. This study complements previous research on this issue, exploring the ways in which China has attempted to legitimize its rise and to forestall any strategic encirclement by the U.S. and others.

Specifically, it investigates whether China's rhetorical discourse with its neighbors, rather than being "cheap talk," helped prevent the rise of a regional balancing coalition against China from 1990 to 2010. Most studies offer traditional balance of power explanations for this outcome, such as free-riding on U.S. efforts, but this neglects the role Chinese leaders' rhetoric has played in legitimating China's rise. This dissertation demonstrates that China's rhetoric did indeed help forestall strategic encirclement up until 2010 because its assurances constituted "costly signaling" that raised the price of any future Chinese aggression. When China then became more assertive in the contested waters of the South China Seas in 2010, it started to pay those costs. China's neighbors began to form a balancing coalition against China rather than bandwagoning with it, moving toward creating exactly the kind of encircling coalition that China has worked for decades to prevent.

To test this argument, this work examines the discourse between China and six of its neighbors: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. It focused on the specific issue areas of domestic politics, foreign policy, defense/military deployment, and Asian leadership. This dissertation finds that China's assurance strategy worked better with South Korea and Malaysia, while it was less successful in influencing Japan's foreign policies.