The issue of China's rise has occupied the central importance in our debate. A successful rise would result in a tectonic shift in the Northeast Asian and global security orders. Conversely, should the rise turn into an abortive disintegration or an implosion, we will most likely face an extended period of chaos in the region. The current discourse in academia suggests that the first scenario is more likely.
Many have analyzed the question of China's rise from a wide variety of the existing power perspectives found in Western international relations studies. Though providing effective analytical approaches, these perspectives do have some serious limitations. For example, the deterrence theory and the theory of balance-of-power are inherently static. Robert Gilpin's power preponderance theory and Jacek Kugler's power transition theory are strongly biased in favor of the existing Westphalian inter-state system and downplay the extant legacy of the Sino-centric world order. On the other hand, some regime perspectives of Western comparative political studies hint of the significant implications of the inside-out dynamics in which a country's domestic politics influences its external policies. For instance, the democratic transition theory warns that an undemocratic regime will take advantage of external issues for internal political gains by manipulating nationalism domestically.
Due to severe regional divergence in terms of stages of development, the Northeast Asian order will likely undergo a far more intricate and complex transitional process than Western analysts expect. While Western Europe is completely post-modern, the Northeast Asia is composed of a post-modern Japan, a modern South Korea and Taiwan, a pre-modern China, and a regressing pre-modern North Korea. Though Western Europe is a renewed Christendom, Northeast Asia does not share any common values or creeds except for their respective ethno-centric aspirations for modernization. This contemporaneousness exacerbates the prospects for a peaceful transition of China's rise, while hampering the creation of an even rudimentary sense of region-wide unity.
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