Abstract
East Asia is now fully engaged in a competition between a rising China and the other
powers—the United States and Japan—while the regional order is in a transition
from a super primacy of the United States to the asymmetric bipolar structure of
the United States and China. China is changing a lot in terms of capabilities and
behavior; but China also shows its benevolence, such as benefit-sharing initiatives
on regional institutionalization development. The “American rebalancing strategy”
has partly reversed the overall situation in East Asia in favor of the United States,
but as 57 countries have joined the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB),
Beijing has now recovered some ground from this overwhelming tide of the U.S.
strategy. China’s military modernization and Sino-Japanese confrontation over
the Diaoyu Islands offer a big excuse and incentive for Japan’s acceleration of
this process of becoming a normal country. The future of Northeast Asia lies
mainly in the four variables and their interactions: the Chinese Communist
Party’s capability to balance its goal of national rejuvenation and nationalistic
emotion in protecting its sovereignty interests; the United States’ genuine attitude
toward China’s power development; Japan’s goal of its nationalistic resurgence
and its complicated strategic ties with China and South Korea; and North Korean
regime stability and nuclear capability development. In spite of the Sino-American
competition relations, there always exists a demand of condominium and strategic
interdependence on global governance and other hot issues in the international
arena. Therefore, management of China-U.S. competition is key to stability of the
regional order.
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