Shifting the Burden of Proof

[ 153 ] book review roundtable • china rising Sea is far from resolved and remains one key test case for measuring China’s intentions in the region. In spite of these limitations China Rising is an important book because Kang takes up the challenge of addressing a much-discussed topic from an explicitlyregionalperspectiveandthroughatheoryofEastAsianinternational relations. This book is additionally useful because it revives interest in the fundamental problem of how to theorize power, interest, and identity. China Rising thus should spur other scholars of East Asian IR toward work that can overcome the dichotomy between foreign policy and international relations theory and place East Asian IR at the forefront of challenging and extending IR theories. ellen l. frostis a Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. She formerly served as Counselor to the U.S. Trade Representative and to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Her latest book is Asia’s New Regionalism (Lynne Rienner, 2008). She can be reached at . Shifting the Burden of Proof Ellen L. Frost Is it possible that East Asia is constructing a new kind of regional order, one that will teach us something about how to govern ourselves in a fluid, post–Cold War strategic environment? Not a chance, say the skeptics: Asia will remain potentially unstable because Asian leaders would rather issue meaningless communiqués than yield a centimeter of sovereignty. Moreover, China’s long-term intentions are unknown and possibly destabilizing, SinoJapanese tensions are still raw, and the Southeast Asian states are weak and divided. In short, East Asia is not a coherent region, let alone a model of order. Only the United States can provide the glue that cements stability, and that glue is military power; everything else is rhetoric. Or so many hard-nosed “realists” would argue. Are the last twenty years or more merely a fluke then? For despite local flare-ups and moments of tension, Asia has been stable, peaceful, and increasingly prosperous. Equally remarkable, Asians seem to be peacefully [ 154 ] asia policy digestingoneofthedefiningstrategicdevelopmentsofourera—theresurgence of a powerful China. This stability calls for an explanation. Doesn’t a rising power always disrupt the regional order? After all consider what happened when Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany and later imperial Japan began flexing their muscles. Now it is China’s turn. According to one version of traditional international relations theory, we should expect that Beijing will seek to use China’s growing power to expand the country’s territorial reach. Asian countries are already facing a choice between joining the China bandwagon or hedging against China by strengthening and deepening military ties with the United States. Either way, Asia is bound to become less stable. Not so, argues David Kang in China Rising. Challenging this rendition of balance-of-power theory on factual grounds, Kang asserts that proponents of the theory derive their conclusions from European history, not from Asia’s own experience. He rejects John Mearsheimer’s dictum that “China cannot rise peacefully…Most of China’s neighbors…will likely join with the United States to contain China’s power.”1 More important than power itself, Kang argues, is what states want to do with such power and how they shape those intentions. Not every state wants to acquire territory from its neighbors; some states inherit self-images and attitudes that predispose them toward peaceful behavior. On these issues Kang sympathizes less with proponents of balanceof -power theory and more with scholars who emphasize such factors as memory,perceptions,beliefs,andintentions.WhatKangdesires,however,isto bring an end to “seemingly endless paradigmatic debates” (p. 9)—presumably those between “realists” and “constructivists”—by looking at the actual facts associated with China’s rise and then modifying international relations theory accordingly. To make this connection between facts and theory, Kang repeatedly spells out his methodology. Starting with an extensively researched survey of the history of China’s relations with its near neighbors, Kang sets up an interpretive model that blends pragmatic interests and identity. By “identity” he means the combination of interaction and narratives that defines a nation’s place in a region and that shapes a nation’s...