Date of Award

7-21-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Discipline

Social Sciences

Department

Government and International Affairs

First Advisor

Prof. ZHANG Baohui

Second Advisor

Prof. SHARMA Shalendra

Abstract

This thesis explores the evolving dynamics of power transitions in the Asia-Pacific region, the rise of China, and its impact on other states’ threat perceptions and corresponding strategic choices, with a particular focus on how regional middle powers, such as Japan, Australia, and Taiwan, respond to China amid their changing threat perceptions of China’s rise from a theoretical perspective. The anarchic international system forces states to respond to power shifts to ensure security. However, how middle powers choose their strategies is a subject of academic debate.

While hedging and the structural realist balancing insights have been the primary perspectives in explaining states’ responses to power shifts, particularly in the context of China’s rise, this thesis argues, however, that hedging is no longer a useful perspective to explain Japan, Australia, and Taiwan’s China policies, despite their current responses toward China exhibiting superficial behavioral similarities with the hedging approach, such as the co-presence of balancing and cooperation. Their clear threat perception of China contradicts the theoretical underpinning of hedging, which requires states’ uncertainty about the threats posed by rising powers. However, many have mistakenly believed that hedging still defines their China policies due to the co-presence of balancing and cooperation.

This thesis also critiques the structural realist insight as it fails to explain the continued economic cooperation of these regional countries with China. According to Kenneth Waltz, when states adopt hard balancing to deter threats posed by rising powers, they are also compelled to seek economic decoupling from one another to minimize their security vulnerabilities. Clearly, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan’s continued economic ties with China directly refute structural realist insight on states’ economic behaviors toward their security rivals.

To fill the void left by both the hedging approach and structural realism in explaining Japan, Australia, and Taiwan’s responses to China’s rise, this thesis proposes a new dualtrack approach to explain how states respond to a rising power in contemporary international politics. It posits that states can simultaneously pursue hard balancing and profit-driven economic cooperation toward rising powers even after establishing threat certainty. While hard balancing is used to deter threats, gains from economic cooperation enhance the aggregate power of states and their long-term defense capabilities. This is a strategically coherent policy with no conflict between the balancing and cooperation elements of states in responding to threatening rising powers.

The findings of this thesis demonstrate that after abandoning hedging due to the certainty of the threat posed by a rising power, a pure balancing posture is not the only policy alternative. Instead, a dual-track approach, characterized by both hard balancing and profitdriven economic cooperation, now defines the policies of middle powers toward China, as shown by Japan, Australia, and Taiwan. This dual-track approach has been overlooked by academic studies in recent years.

To conclude, this thesis advances realist international relations theory by offering a dual-track approach to explain how middle powers respond to rising powers in contemporary power transitions.

Language

English

Recommended Citation

Chen, L. (2025). Beyong fledging and balancing: Middle power's dual-track approcah to China's rise (Doctoral thesis, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/252/

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