2019 - 2020 Back

The Distribution of Identity in Asia and China's Regional Hegemonic Prospects (CANCELLED)

Professor Ted Hopf
Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore



About the speaker: Prof Hopf is the Provost Chair Professor of Political Science at NUS. His main fields of interest are international relations theory, qualitative research methods, and identity, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the former Soviet space. His most recent book, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958 (Oxford 2012), won the 2013 American Political Science Association Robert Jervis-Paul Schroeder Award for Best Book in International Relations and History and the 2013 Marshall D. Shulman Award, presented by the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies for the best book published that year on the international politics of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. He was a Fulbright Professor in the autumn of 2001 at the European University at St. Petersburg and a former vice-chairperson of the Board of Directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.

About the talk: In earlier work Allan, Vucetic, and Hopf (Allan, Bentley B., Srdjan Vucetic, and Ted Hopf. "The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order: China's Hegemonic Prospects." International Organization 72.4 (2018): 839-869.) argued that the rise of China was unlikely to be accompanied by Chinese hegemony because of the distribution of identities among the world's great powers. In particular, the only great power in the world with which China's "authoritarian capitalism" resonates is Russia. In this work we extend our analysis to China's more immediate neighborhood. As William Wohlforth argued in 1999, (Wohlforth, William C. "The stability of a unipolar world." International security 24.1 (1999): 5-41.) China faces a regional hegemony problem long before it faces a global one. He argued we should expect regional balancing to counter China's rise before the US or Europe even need engage. In this paper we explore the distribution of national identities in China's neighborhood and find a far more mixed picture. While most of China's neighbors are indeed likely resistant to Chinese hegemony, as their own identities are incompatible with China's, four countries have self-understandings more consonant with China's and hence are more likely to be accommodative to China's rise in the region: Russia, Cambodia, Laos, and Singapore.

Time: 2:30-4:00pm, Friday, 15 November 2019
Venue: USC, 8/F, Tin Ka Ping Building, CUHK
Language: English