Balancing Identity and Reality

[ 157 ] book review roundtable • china rising As Kang’s thinking evolves, I hope that he will devote more attention to the political consequences of deeper and closer economic relations with China (pp. 66–67). China has emerged as the number one or number two trading partner of virtually every country in East Asia. From the perspective of any one of those countries, this trade dependence with China is asymmetrical because China possesses all the leverage. This worries some experts in the U.S. military community. I argue elsewhere, however, that despite this asymmetry economic dependence is in fact mutual. Though any trade partner may be expendable, China is dependent on other Asian countries as a group to supply materials and parts, facilitate technology transfer, and create wealth and influence, thereby bolstering the government’s legitimacy.7 This mutuality is quite consistent with Kang’s views. Adding to a growing scholarly interest in regions as pillars of global order, Kang’s thesis should stimulate fundamental questions regarding the complex interaction between the global system, the behavior of regional powers, and local responses. This reviewer came away from the book persuaded more firmly than ever that East Asian countries have developed a regional order that is both stable and sufficiently flexible to adapt to—and influence—a rising China. The burden of proof has now shifted to those who argue that Asia’s stability is fleeting. 7 Ellen L. Frost, Asia’s New Regionalism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2008), 165–66. Balancing Identity and Reality Christopher P. Twomey In China Rising David Kang advances two claims—one empirical, one causal—that challenge the core tenets of classic international relations theory. First, Kang argues that East Asian states are in fact accommodating rather than balancing China. Second, he argues that this behavior is a result of the christopher p. twomeyis Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School where he is also Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Conflict. This review does not represent the official position of the U.S. Navy or other U.S. government entities. He can be reached at . [ 158 ] asia policy specific conceptions of identity in China and her neighbors (p. 4). These arguments have critical importance for U.S. foreign policy in the region, as Kang rightly emphasizes in his conclusion. By arguing that the very nature of international interaction is specific to the culture of the actors, China Rising constitutes a formidable broadside against important strains in international relations literature. Admirable for its clarity and for its timely attention both to the peculiarities of Asian international affairs and to Beijing’s role in the region, China Rising nevertheless suffers from three main weaknesses: first, the book neglects detailed analysis of the core tools of hard balancing; second, the proposed causal argument not only fails in important cases but also neglects important alternate explanations; third, the evaluation of identity in China Rising falls short of the high standard established by other works in the constructivist tradition. Kang’sempiricalclaimpossessessomeverisimilitudebutisoversimplified. Kang correctly observes that Asian states are not engaged in containment of China. Such a sweeping statement, however, illuminates little of importance regarding contemporary Asian security affairs. In a helpful chart (p. 55) Kang disaggregates the region, sketching a wide range of behavior toward China: North Korea is actively bandwagoning with China, while Taiwan is balancing against Beijing; Vietnam and Malaysia are leaning toward North Korea’s strategy, while Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are following Taiwan in balancing against China. More often, however, Kang coats the region with a veneer of consistency that minimizes the importance of national differences. The nuanced view of relations toward China afforded by the chart is valuable, and indeed justifying the chart’s coding and explaining such wide variation would serve the field well. Doing so, however, would have required a more explicit focus on the metrics by which balancing policy is judged. Kang wisely steers away from incorporating “soft balancing” in his appraisal of Asian policy; such a concept is notably hard to evaluate systematically and objectively. Nonetheless, a richer discussion of how to array security policy is warranted in a book on “hard balancing.” Though “military buildups...