Ascending China and the Hegemonic United States: Economically Based Cooperation or Strategic Power Politics?

Jörg Vogelmann looks into one of the central political and economic relationships of the 21st century. The author finds Sino-U.S. ties marked by strong, slightly asymmetric (economic) interdependence, a relatively fast economic power transition under way as well as slow to moderate shifts in military power. He develops a neoliberal and a neorealist grand theory picture of Sino-U.S. and international relations, and empirically verifies these influential perspectives by analyzing post-Cold War Chinese and U.S. foreign policies in the major flashpoints the Taiwan and the North Korea issue. Despite and due to globalization, ties between ascending China (as a potential regional or once even global U.S. challenger) and the hegemonic United States may likely continue to be marked by strategic power politics – and will decisively affect trans- and international relations.