Politics of Accommodation of the Rise of China: the case of Australia

Abstract

In the context of the rise of China, Southeast Asian countries and Australia have begun shifting towards an accommodation policy. Robert Ross examines the accommodation policy in South Korea, Mochizuki discusses Japanese accommodationists, and Manicom and O'Neil show some evidence of Australian accommodation of Chinese strategic preferences. The scholarship has, however, narrowly focused on and overestimated the role of security. Through a study of the origin, process, structural conditions and impacts of accommodation policy, this paper broadens the concept of accommodation to capture its multiple meanings and practices. It finds that a selective accommodation policy and strategy toward the rise of China developed in Australia is a sign of the changing power relations under which the mainstream paradigms of containment and engagement, hard balancing or bandwagoning, have proved inadequate to the task of dealing with China, and that economic interdependence has driven the politics of accommodation in Australia and several Asian countries.

Notes

*Baogang He is a professor and chair in International Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. The author would like to thank Kingsley Edney and Matthew Hood for their wonderful research assistance, and valuable comments by Andrew O'Neil, Richard Rigby, Colin Mackerras and the participants at the workshop on the rise of China on 5 July 2010, Deakin University. He can be reached by email at [email protected]

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