Rethinking Chinese Territorial Disputes: How the Value of Contested Land Shapes Territorial Policies
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 Rethinking Chinese Territorial Disputes: How the Value of Contested Land Shapes Territorial Policies Ke Wang University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wang, Ke, "Rethinking Chinese Territorial Disputes: How the Value of Contested Land Shapes Territorial Policies" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1491. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1491 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1491 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rethinking Chinese Territorial Disputes: How the Value of Contested Land Shapes Territorial Policies Abstract What explains the timing of when states abandon a delaying strategy to change the status quo of one territorial dispute? And when this does happen, why do states ultimately use military force rather than concessions, or vice versa? This dissertation answers these questions by examining four major Chinese territorial disputes - Chinese-Russian and Chinese-Indian frontier disputes and Chinese-Vietnamese and Chinese-Japanese offshore island disputes. I propose a new theory which focuses on the changeability of territorial values and its effects on territorial policies. I argue that territories have particular meaning and value for particular state in particular historical and international settings. The value of a territory may look very different to different state actors at one point in time, or to the same state actor at different points in time. This difference in perspectives may largely help explain not only why, but when state actors choose to suddenly abandon the status quo. Particularly, I hypothesize that a cooperative territorial policy is more likely when the economic value of the territory increases (contingent on low symbolic and military value), while an escalation policy is more likely when the symbolic or military value increases, independent of economic factors. As a result, disputes over territories with high economic salience are, all else equal, more likely to be resolved peacefully, while disputes over territories with high symbolic or military salience are more likely to either fester for long periods of time or escalate into armed conflict. Through historical process tracing and across-case comparison, this study found that (a) Chinese policies toward the frontier disputes conform well to large parts of my original hypothesis, which explains territorial policies in terms of changing territorial values; but that (b) Chinese policies towards offshore island disputes conform more clearly to state-centered theories based on opportunism, realpolitik, and changes in relative power. I suggest that as China's naval power becomes stronger, and it feels less vulnerable in the region, China will be less likely to escalate and more likely to cooperate over the disputed islands, particularly if such cooperation can draw allies closer to China rather than the United States. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Political Science First Advisor Avery Goldstein Keywords China, Territorial Disputes, Territorial Policy, Territorial Values Subject Categories Political Science This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1491 RETHINKING CHINESE TERRITORIAL DISPUTES: HOW THE VALUE OF CONTESTED LAND SHAPES TERRITORIAL POLICIES Ke Wang A DISSERTATION in Political Science Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________ Avery Goldstein, Professor of Political Science Graduate Group Chairperson _________________ Matthew Levendusky, Associate Professor of Political Science Dissertation Committee Avery Goldstein, Professor of Political Science Ian Lustick, Professor of Political Science Edward Mansfield, Professor of Political Science Alex Weisiger, Assistant Professor of Political Science RETHINKING CHINESE TERRITORIAL DISPUTES: HOW THE VALUE OF CONTESTED LANDS SHAPES TERRITORIAL POLITICES COPYRIGHT 2014 Ke Wang This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ For my family iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT I am enormously grateful for all of the help and support that I have received throughout this unforgettable process. First, I am thankful for the members of my dissertation committee and their valuable time and energy reading every draft and providing useful comments, critique and feedback. Avery Goldstein is an advisor any graduate student is lucky to have— someone always there whenever you need guidance, and whose every comment and suggestion always makes your own work better. I was indeed very lucky. Ian Lustick’s enthusiasm and constructive criticism toward this project encouraged me to turn my original idea into research work. From early on, Professor Lustick went out of his way to make sure I had the resources and support necessary to be successful, and without his push I might not have trusted my own instinct. Alex Weisiger’s thought-provoking, incisive and detailed comments contributed significantly to the improvement of this research, and his kindness and positivity helped keep me positive when things got difficult. And Edward Mansfield’s support—from theoretical guidance in and out of the classroom, to financial support through the department and the Brown Center, which allowed me to conduct research in China and present my work at APSA—was pivotal to the completion of this project. In addition to my committee members, I am very grateful to Jennifer Amyx and Patricia Kozak for their help and support in the past years. Second, I want to thank my professors at Marquette University, especially Barrett McCormick, Michael Fleet, and Lawrence LeBlanc. Their teaching, guidance, and iv support both during and after my time at Marquette planted the seeds that would eventually become this dissertation, and laid the foundation for the rest of my academic and professional life, and much more than that. In addition to my professors, I am also grateful to my fellow graduate students at Penn, especially Dalei Jie, Meral Ugur Cinar, Chris Allen Thomas, and Ruolin Su, and my new colleagues at UCSD, Angelica Mangindin, Han Ho, Susan Yan, Susan Madsen and Latterly Wan. Thank you all for your warm help and encouragement. Moreover, I would like to give special thanks to my families in China, Wisconsin, Florida, and Louisiana. I owe my parents a debt that I can never repay for their unconditional love, support and understanding. Also, thank you to Kenneth and Katherine, who I have not met yet, but have already brought so much joy to my life in the past 8 months. Finally, thanks to John, my dearest husband, pal and teammate. He has been there for me since the day I landed on America, using his love and humor to cheer me up to face challenges. He is the one who always believes in me, helps me in any possible ways and makes me a stronger and better person. v ABSTRACT RETHINKING CHINESE TERRITORIAL DISPUTES: HOW THE VALUE OF CONTESTED LANDS SHAPES TERRITORIAL POLICIES Ke Wang Avery Goldstein What explains the timing of when states abandon a delaying strategy to change the status quo of one territorial dispute? And when this does happen, why do states ultimately use military force rather than concessions, or vice versa? This dissertation answers these questions by examining four major Chinese territorial disputes – Chinese-Russian and Chinese-Indian frontier disputes and Chinese-Vietnamese and Chinese-Japanese offshore island disputes. I propose a new theory which focuses on the changeability of territorial values and its effects on territorial policies. I argue that territories have particular meaning and value for particular state in particular historical and international settings. The value of a territory may look very different to different state actors at one point in time, or to the same state actor at different points in time. This difference in perspectives may largely help explain not only why, but when state actors choose to suddenly abandon the status quo. Particularly, I hypothesize that a cooperative territorial policy is more likely when the economic value of the territory increases (contingent on low symbolic and military value), while an escalation policy is more likely when the symbolic or military value increases, independent of economic factors. As a result, disputes over territories with high economic salience are, all else equal, more likely to be resolved peacefully, while disputes over territories with high symbolic or military salience are more likely to either fester for long periods of time or escalate into armed conflict. Through historical process tracing and across-case comparison, this study found that (a) Chinese policies toward the frontier disputes conform well to large parts of my original vi hypothesis, which explains territorial policies in terms of changing territorial values; but that (b) Chinese policies towards offshore island disputes conform more clearly to state-centered theories based on opportunism, realpolitik, and changes in relative power. I suggest that as China’s naval power becomes stronger,