Assessing China's Rise and US Leadership in Asia—growing maturity and balance

Abstract

The common prediction in media and specialist commentary during much of the past decade was that Asia was adjusting to an emerging China-centered order and US influence was in decline. Over time, it became clearer that developments in the region showed a more complex reality. A growing contingent of scholars and specialists looked beyond accounts that inventoried China's strengths and US weaknesses and carefully considered other factors, including Chinese limitations and US strengths, before making their overall judgments. These more comprehensive and balanced assessments tempered sometimes alarming implications of earlier predictions of China's rise and decline in US leadership. This article reviews the evolution over the past decade of media and specialist assessments of China's rise and its implications for US leadership in Asia in order to draw lessons from this evolution in analysis and what the lessons might mean for future assessments of China's increasing role in Asian and world affairs.

Notes

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^*Robert Sutter is Visiting Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. This article is a revised paper for the conference China, US and Regional Cooperation and Institution-Building in the Asia Pacific, University of Denver, 28–29 May 2009. It benefitted from suggestions offered by conference discussants and other participants.

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^4. Ellen Frost, ‘Re-engaging with Southeast Asia’, Pacnet Newsletter 37, (26 July 2006), available at: www.csis.org/pacfor; Eric Teo Chu Cheow, ‘America's growing insecurity’, Pacnet Newsletter 39, (3 August 2006), available at: www.csis.org/pacfor.

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^11. See the quarterly reviews of these and other assessments of China's rise in Asia contained in the China–Southeast Asia section of the e-journal Comparative Connections, available at: www.csis.org/pacfor.

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^25. Cha, ‘Winning Asia’.

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^27. Sutter, The United States in Asia, p. 272.

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^39. See the review of the Stanley Foundation, CSIS study and CRS study in ‘China–Southeast Asia relations’, Comparative Connections 10(3), (October 2008), available at: www.csis.org/pacfor.

^40. Joshua Kurlantzick, ‘So far, it just isn't looking like Asia's century’, Washington Post, (7 September 2008), p. B3.

^41. China's Rising Influence in Asia: Implications for US Policy (Washington, DC: Institute for National Security Studies, April 2008).

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^43. Robert Sutter, ‘Dealing with a rising China: US strategy and policy’, in Zhang Yunling, ed., Making New Partnership: A Rising China and Its Neighbors (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press (China), 2007).

^44. Andrew Nathan, ‘Present at the stagnation’, Foreign Affairs 85(4), (July/August 2006), pp. 17–32.