Abstract
China’s maritime development having come up against pressures and challenges in recent years, the concept of “strategic hedging”—that is, pursuit of and investment in policies meant to protect the nation against the effects of geopolitical and economic uncertainty—has emerged. One of its most important proponents is Gao Bai, an ethnic Chinese professor of sociology at Duke University (in Durham, North Carolina) and the author of the article “The High-Speed Railway and China’s Grand Strategy in the 21st Century” (高铁与中国21世纪大 战略).1 Professor Gao believes that the 2008 global financial crisis and the return, through its own strategic adjustment, of the United States to the Asia-Pacific region mean that China’s “blue-water strategy” has come to an end. The financial crisis severely battered China’s export market, which will be difficult to restore even after the crisis has subsided. America’s return to the Asia-Pacific region has not only complicated China’s situation in its own neighborhood but made East Asian economic integration more difficult to achieve. As Professor Gao points out, because China’s economic transformation cannot be achieved in the short term, the nation must find a new way out—and a high-speed rail provides a realistic way to break through the current impasse.
Read full article here