Research

Peaceful Rise: The Threat of Rising Powers Reconsidered

“The Bargaining Theory of War and North Korea.” (First author, with David C. Kang)  Forthcoming at the Asian Journal of Peacebuilding.

“China’s Peaceful Rise, After All? The Threat of Rising Powers Reconsidered.”

• Recipient of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2023 American Political Science Association.

There seems to be a growing consensus among IR scholars that China’s rise poses an unprecedented and increasing threat to its neighbors, East Asian states. How sound are these arguments theoretically and empirically? International Relations literature has accumulated a vast amount of discussions on the components of external threat, so it serves as a “health check” to examine whether the conventional wisdom about China’s threat aligns with the theoretical expectations and empirical evidence. This essay systematically analyzes China’s traditional threat to its neighbors and shows a counterintuitive result: theoretical expectations of International Relations literature and subsequent evidence consistently indicate that the degree of traditional threat China poses to its neighbors is relatively low. Thus, there is a gap between  IR literature on external threats and the conventional wisdom about China’s threat. There may be “threat inflation,” or something may be wrong with our conceptualization and/or measurement of external threats. Future research should investigate the reason for the gap and how we can fix it.

“Evaluating the East Asian “Arms Races”: Three Layered Analysis.”

In recent years, it has often been claimed that there is an ongoing arms race between China and East Asian states. Is this truly the case? How do we know if the trend of military buildup in East Asia constitutes an arms race, which is believed to increase the likelihood of war? Scholars are divided on this issue, often reaching different conclusions based on varying indicators and criteria for what constitutes an arms race. This paper offers a thorough review of the “East Asian arms race” case by combining both quantitative and qualitative measurements. Three layers of analysis are used: first, applying existing quantitative criteria for arms races; second, comparing the degree of military buildup in East Asia with that of states outside the region; and third, conducting qualitative case studies. By examining the trend of military buildup in East Asia through these analyses, this paper argues that current levels of arming in the region are more of a “routine” arms competition and unlikely to be an arms race.

“Peaceful Rise or Security Competition? Rising Powers, Uncertainty, and the Costs of Territorial Expansion”

Is security competition between rising powers and their neighbors inevitable? Conventional wisdom is that rising powers’ capabilities should, more or less, have a positive correlation with their neighbors’ military efforts. Since potential adversaries’ intentions are often difficult to discern, rising powers’ neighbors should increase their military efforts to catch up with the rising powers’ increasing capabilities to prepare for a contingency. However, this paper argues that existing studies overlook another inadvertent effect of increasing capabilities, which is that the increase in rising powers’ capabilities can, counterintuitively, update their neighbors’ belief in a way that rising powers are more likely to be status quo powers. Therefore, the increasing capabilities of rising powers have mixed effects on their neighbors’ military efforts. This paper discusses the response of East Asian states to China’s rise and Eastern European states to resurgent Russia to illustrate the plausibility of my argument.

“Enduring Pacifism: Legal Restrictions and Japan’s Defense Policy.“

“Revisiting ‘War of Miscalculation’ in East Asia.”