Rising Powers and Regional Orders: China's Strategy and Cross-Strait Relations

Abstract

The neo-Gramscian approach has become popular within academic debates to theorize processes of global neoliberal convergence. But, it has also been challenged in the context of the ever more pronounced regionalizing tendencies of the current multipolar global order. This is especially so with the rise of China which introduces an alternative logic to regional social order formation processes from a typical neoliberal capitalist social order convergence. This paper argues, however, that a Gramscian approach can precisely account for such regional social order formation processes through the concept of regional historical blocs. This is demonstrated through a case study of the social order shaping effects that a Cross-Strait historical bloc forged between China's ‘contender state’-wielding elite bureaucracy and Taiwan's ascendant social forces has had on fostering Taiwan's internationalization toward China. This illustrates that, in addition to a broader global social order convergence process, a neo-Gramscian approach is equally useful to explain similarly defined regional social order convergence.

Keywords:

• multipolar order
• rising powers
• regional social orders
• historical blocs
• East Asia
• Taiwan and China

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kevin Gray and Oli Weiss for their enormously useful feedback and suggestions for this article. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments and the editors of this journal for overseeing the review process which has helped me to significantly improve upon a previous manuscript of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Interview with Chien Hsih-Chieh in 17 December 2012.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jasper K. Green

Jasper Green is a Ph.D. researcher in International Relations at the University of Sussex where he also received his MA degree in Global Political Economy. Jasper's main area of research is on the Political economy of Cross-Strait economic integration and the development of a neo-Gramscian framework, which can theorize this process through the concept of a regionally operating Cross-Strait historical bloc. To do so, he focuses especially on the contemporary development trajectories of both Taiwan and China and how this has affected their social order transformation processes to date. By applying a Gramscian framework to theorize Cross-Strait relations, Jasper's theoretical aim is to develop a more explicitly regional neo-Gramscian analysis, which can account for the more pronounced regional features of the current multipolar global order. By doing so, he aims to advance beyond prevalent conceptions within the critical literature which continue to theorize global order in terms of a singular neoliberal convergence and resistance binary.