Abstract
The debate about China’s rise and future United States–China relations has focused on the purpose to which China’s growing international power will be put. This article focuses on the form of China’s power, distinguishing between domination and authority. Different great powers have, at different times, chosen one, the other, or more commonly differing mixes of the two forms. How China chooses now and in the future will have a significant effect on its relationships with other states, and through them on its relationship with the United States. The first section explores the differences between domination and authority as strategies for the exercise of international power. The second section summarizes a theory of authority with particular relevance to China today. Though necessarily speculative, this section identifies where China is most likely to choose one strategy over the other as its international influence expands. The final section examines the domestic impediments in China to the choice of authority. While both China and the United States might be better off in a world in which the former constructs an international hierarchy to parallel the latter’s, the conclusion draws a relatively pessimistic assessment of the prospects for cooperation between the two emerging superpowers.
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