Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

M. Taylor Fravel is associate professor of political science and member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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"This excellent book is the first to systematically examine China's handling of territorial disputes and shows why in many cases, the country has been willing to negotiate and concede. The reasons given are novel and provocative, and challenge conventional wisdom about the relationship between domestic unrest and external aggressiveness. This book will be the gold standard for further work on a vital but understudied topic."--Alastair Iain Johnston, Harvard University

"Fravel uses China, which has had more territories in dispute with neighbors than any other state since World War II, to form and test hypotheses about when states are likely to go to war or cooperate to solve territorial disputes. The result is both the first comprehensive benchmark study of China's behavior along its frontiers and a brilliant contribution to political science."--Chas W. Freeman, Jr., former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs

"Fravel has given us a compelling and comprehensive account of why China has generally compromised in its territorial disputes with its neighbors rather than resort to force. In the process, he has made significant advances in both international relations theory and Chinese foreign policy."--Robert J. Art, Brandeis University

"Strong Borders, Secure Nation is a significant work of scholarship. M. Taylor Fravel has combined authoritative and extensive research of Chinese documents with sophisticated political science methodologies. The result is both a comprehensive and definitive work on Chinese policy toward border disputes as well as a persuasive theoretical approach to the international politics of territorial conflicts."--Robert S. Ross, Boston College

"A counterintuitive and bracing dose of reality, Fravel's exemplary book manifests contextual nuance derived from plentiful Chinese sources, an elegant argument, and the conceptual rigor valued in contemporary political science. Strong Borders, Secure Nation will be the standard-bearer among studies of China's experience managing territorial disputes."--Alan Wachman, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

"Tightly framed and carefully reasoned, this excellent book addresses an obvious gap in the study of Chinese foreign policy and national security. I believe that this book will become the benchmark text in the field for years to come."--Allen Carlson, Cornell University

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Strong Borders, Secure Nation

Princeton University Press

Introduction

China is the new great power of the twenty-first century. Whether its rise will be peaceful or violent is a fundamental question for the study and practice of international relations. Unlike many past power transitions, China's current economic growth has occurred largely through its acceptance of the prevailing rules, norms, and institutions of the international system. Nevertheless, ambiguity and anxiety persist around how China will employ the military power that its growing wealth creates.

Amid this historical change, one concern is China's potential for violent conflict with other states over territory. The congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, for example, stated in its 2006 annual report that China might "take advantage of a more advanced military to threaten use of force, or actually use force, to facilitate desirable resolutions ... of territorial claims." Such concerns have merit. Historically, rapid internal economic growth has propelled states to redefine and expand the interests that they pursue abroad. Economic development funds the acquisition of more robust military capabilities to pursue and defend these interests. Often such expansion results in the escalation of territorial disputes with other states. More generally, the disruption in the balance of power generates uncertainty among the leading states in the system about the security of vital interests and the structure of international order.

In its territorial disputes, however, China has been less prone to violence and more cooperative than a singular view of an expansionist state suggests. Since 1949, China has participated in twenty-three unique territorial disputes with its neighbors on land and at sea. Yet it has pursued compromise and offered concessions in seventeen of these conflicts. China's compromises have often been substantial, as it has usually offered to accept less than half of the contested territory in any final settlement. In addition, these compromises have resulted in boundary agreements in which China has abandoned potential irredentist claims to more than 3.4 million square kilometers of land that had been part of the Qing empire at its height in the early nineteenth century. In total, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has contested roughly 238,000 square kilometers or just 7 percent of the territory once part of the Qing.

Although China has pursued compromise frequently, it has nevertheless used force in six of its territorial disputes. Some of these conflicts, especially with India and Vietnam, were notably violent. Others, such as the crises over Taiwan in the 1950s and the clash with the Soviet Union in 1969, were tense moments in the Cold War involving threats to use nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, despite a willingness to use force in certain disputes, China has seized little land that it did not control before the outbreak of hostilities.

The wide variation in China's behavior is puzzling for scholars of international relations and China alike. Leading theories of international relations would expect a state with China's characteristics to be uncompromising and prone to using force in territorial disputes, not conciliatory. Contrary to scholars of offensive realism, however, China has rarely exploited its military superiority to bargain hard for the territory that it claims or to seize it through force. China has likewise not become increasingly assertive in its territorial disputes as its relative power has grown in the past two decades. Contrary to others who emphasize the violent effects of nationalism, which would suggest inflexibility in conflicts over national sovereignty, China has been quite willing to offer territorial concessions despite historical legacies of external victimization and territorial dismemberment under the Qing. And contrary to scholars who stress the role of political institutions, China has escalated only a minority of its territorial conflicts even with a highly centralized, authoritarian political system that places few internal constraints on the use of force.

China's pattern of cooperation and escalation in its territorial disputes may also be surprising for observers and scholars of China. At the end of the Cold War, many expected that China's numerous territorial disputes would be a leading source of instability in East Asia. With the increased visibility of popular nationalism over the past two decades, other scholars maintain that China harbors broad irredentist claims to land on its periphery that its growing power will allow it to pursue. Similarly, amid the prominence of popular nationalism, China is seen as "prone to muscle-flexing" in its foreign policy in order to deflect attention from growing social unrest. Finally, some scholars maintain that China has a strategic preference for offensive uses of force, especially in zero-sum conflicts such as territorial disputes.

Nevertheless, China has been more likely to compromise over disputed territory and less likely to use force than many policy analysts assert, international relations theories might predict, or China scholars expect. China's varied behavior sparks the questions that this book seeks to answer. Why has China pursued compromise in some disputes but used force in others? More generally, why and when do states cooperate in territorial conflicts? Under what conditions do states escalate disputes to high levels of violence instead of cooperating?

Answers to these questions can help illuminate the trajectory of China's rise as a great power. In an international system composed of sovereign states, behavior in territorial disputes offers a fundamental indicator of whether a state pursues status-quo or revisionist foreign policies. Historically, contested land has been the most common issue over which states collide and go to war. If states are likely to resort to force as a tool of statecraft, it will perhaps be most evident in how they pursue territorial goals. As China today remains involved in several disputes, these questions are far from academic. Violence over some areas that China claims, such as Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands, would likely result in hostility between China and the United States, which maintains close ties with Taipei and Tokyo.

Answers to these questions are also hard to find. Although research on China's conflict behavior highlights the role of territorial disputes, they have yet to be examined systematically. Instead, individual studies have weighed the legal merits of China's sovereignty claims or examined specific disputes, such as the boundary conflict between China and India. The few comprehensive studies that do exist investigate only China's compromises in the 1960s and were unable to benefit from the flowering of new Chinese-language source materials in the last decade. Finally, no study compares China's willingness to compromise or use force in all these conflicts, analysis that is key to understanding China's behavior.

COOPERATION AND ESCALATION IN TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

My explanation of China's behavior is rooted in two theories that explain how states choose to pursue their territorial claims. One theory examines the sources of cooperation in territorial disputes, while the other examines the sources of escalation. As detailed in chapter 1, each theory starts with the assumption that...