Evaluating US soft power in Asia: military,economic and sociopolitical relationships between Asia and the United States

The changing dynamics of international politics such as the expansion of the European Union, the growing importance of Asia, and the post-11 September environment have raised great concern about US soft power all over the world. At the governmental level, transpacific relationships may have encouraged military, economic and sociopolitical collaboration. The Asians' perceptions about US soft power at the individual level, however, may not be consistent with the governmental level. By using the 2003 AsiaBarometer survey, this article examines the factors that contribute to individuals' perceptions about US soft power in seven Asian nations – China, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Three main factors – military, economic and sociopolitical – are considered. Higher assistance by the US government engenders positive responses from the respondents. For causal relationships, economic and sociopolitical variables, rather than the military variable, enforce individuals' positive perceptions about US soft power, according to the multilevel estimates.     

重塑国家之责：人的安全保护、冲突与治理

与传统的“国家安全”观相比,“人的安全”观是非传统安全领域中的重要内容。人的安全受多维度影响。其中一个或几个维度出现问题,人的安全就受到威胁;威胁达到一定程度,就可能导致冲突。这些维度构成冲突诱因。冲突诱因呈现多元化。有的诱因与冲突相关度较低,有的诱因对诱发冲突具有乘数效应。就触发状态而言,冲突可能由单一因素诱发,亦可由多种因素叠加引发。如果治理失当,会导致冲突恶化。一个国家要有效地治理冲突,就应当对导致冲突的诱因及相关度有深刻理解,如此方可对症下药。人的安全概念、国家保护责任与新干预主义是相继形成的三个概念。应当说,尽管以人为中心的安全框架日益被全球关注,但应当采取何种治理形式,何种治理形式属于最优方案,在国际社会中并未达成共识。但是,根据《联合国宪章》的精神,保护人的安全的责任首先在于当事国政府。主权原则仍是国际关系的基本原则,是解决人的安全问题必须遵守的根本准则。     

China's Belt and Road Initiative: at the crossroads of challenges and ambitions

Interpretations of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mostly agree that it is a policy opening that offers some remedies for China's economic and security challenges, as well as reflects China's increasing regional and global ambitions. This paper argues that the multiple drivers characterizing the BRI result from the multiple identities of China as a developing country struggling with several sources of instability and macroeconomic problems and, simultaneously, a regional and an emerging power, and finally a major global power with significant economic capacity to shape the global economic order. The paper aims to substantiate the entanglement of the defensive and ambitious motivations behind the BRI by examining the background against which the Chinese Communist Party leadership has suggested it. In so doing, it draws on Chinese official policy documents and statistics, speeches from Chinese leaders and existing social–scientific research on the transformation of China's economic and political landscape in recent years.     

The Age of Anxiety: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy in a Post-Hegemonic Global Order

The crisis of liberal democracy is closely associated with major global shifts, which have been accelerated by the global financial crisis of 2008, with its dislocating effects in the established democracies of the global centre. Relative stagnation and rising problems of inequality and unemployment, coupled with additional shocks in the form of mass migration and terrorist attacks have generated fertile grounds for the rise of right-wing radical populist sentiments, which have been turned into electoral advantage by charismatic leaders. The crisis of liberal democracy is also a global phenomenon in the sense that liberal democracy has been severely challenged by the rise of strategic models of capitalism, notably its authoritarian version represented by the growing power and influence of the China-Russia coalition. Indeed, the success of the latter has served as a kind of reference for many authoritarian or hybrid regimes in a changing global context, at a time when the key Western powers appear to be losing their previous economic and moral appeal.     

The "Belt and Road" Initiative:A Chinese Concept for Global Development

China's "Belt and Road" initiative is emerging as the Western-dominated world order is declining.Capitalism has intensified the rich-poor divide and power politics have led to great upheavals.Western values have caused a "value dislocation" for non-Western countries.The world is calling for new development concepts.The "Belt and Road"initiative has emerged as an answer.It embodies China's ideas on global development.First,it works for the "common prosperity" of every country,which will ease contradictions between the South and the North.Second,it emphasizes geo-economic integration that will heal the fragmentation of Eurasia.Third,it advocates linkages between people and inclusiveness to create a new kind of civilization.However,many difficulties and challenges lie ahead for the implementation of the "Belt and Road" initiative.     

The trade-ification of the food sustainability agenda

This contribution argues that the food sustainability agenda in global food governance arrangements is becoming ‘trade-ified’. It shows that international trade has become normalized in these settings not only as being compatible with, but also as a key delivery mechanism for, food system sustainability. The paper first explains the rationale for this dominant narrative, which revolves around the efficiency gains from trade. Second, it outlines two important critiques of this approach – one that stresses the need to look beyond food as an economic commodity, and one that reveals the internal flaws of trade theory – which together provide important counterpoints to this dominant narrative. Third, the paper offers three interrelated explanations for why trade continues to be presented as a key ingredient to food sustainability despite the weaknesses of the dominant approach: institutional fragmentation in global food governance; the carryover of previous normative compromises regarding trade and the environment in other governance settings; and the influence of powerful interests.     

One in 20: the G20, middle powers and global governance reform

There is a growing consensus that the international system needs to be reformed to reflect the changing distribution of power with the rise of the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs). The Group of Twenty (G20) has been at the centre of these discussions. Within the G20, emphasis has been on great powers or rising powers and their capacity to drive reform. Less attention has been given to the preferences and strategies of middle powers in the G20 and their capacity to shape global governance reform. Drawing on interviews with G20 officials, this paper considers the role of Australia as president of the G20 in 2014. Australia’s presidency presents a unique opportunity to examine the behaviour of a middle power as it balances the competing global governance claims of the USA and the BRICs.     

Why cooperate with others? Demystifying China's trilateral aid cooperation

This article examines China's motivations for trilateral aid cooperation in the context of its seemingly assertive diplomacy in recent years. Previously known for its preference for bilateral aid delivery, China, however, is increasingly conducting trilateral cooperation with western donor states and UN agencies. By employing constructivism and cognitive learning theories, this paper focuses on two perspectives: China's calculation of national interests and international engagement, and is structured around two case studies: UNDP's advisory role for China on development cooperation, and China–US trilateral aid cooperation. It argues that strategically, China is putting growing emphasis on its identity as a growing great power in the development sector, using trilateral cooperation to build its global image. Technically, China's four-decade long external engagement has promoted changes in its ideas about aid cooperation, thus reinforcing its desire for cognitive learning to improve its aid performance.     

Transforming (but not transcending) the state system? On statist cosmopolitanism

Can states become committed and competent agents of cosmopolitan justice? The theory of ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ argues that they can: their citizens can be turned towards a commitment to cosmopolitan principles and actions by moral entrepreneurs constituting a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’, and can be sustained in their commitment to those principles by their pre-existing attachment to the state as a political community. Taking cosmopolitan principles as axiomatic, this paper subjects statist cosmopolitanism to critique. First, I question the scale of the transformation that a cosmopolitan avant-garde can engender given the complexity of the causal chains the avant-garde seek to elucidate, as well as the countervailing potency of the state itself which reinforces particularistic attitudes in its citizens. Second, I argue that even if, contra my preceding argument, the cosmopolitan avant-garde were to be successful, states would find it desirable to federally integrate in order to be better able to realise their cosmopolitan commitments. Such integration is compatible with statist cosmopolitanism’s motivational theory, even if not its institutional vision. Finally, I re-characterise the cosmopolitan avant-garde as agitators for the transcendence, rather than just transformation, of the state system.