• “Is China on the verge of a Weltpolitik? A comparison of the current shift in the balance of power between China and the West and the shift between Great Britain and Wilhelmine Germany”

Defraigne, Jean-Christophe
(2014) “Interpreting China as a Regional and Global Power: Nationalism and Historical Consciousness in World Politics” — ISBN: [9781137450296], p. pp293-323., published

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Since its reopening in the 1980s, China has been progressively reclaiming the place it enjoyed in the world economy prior to the industrial revolution and the colonization of China by imperialist powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the resurgent Chinese economy is now expanding in a globalized world economy characterized by a high degree of interdependence rather than in the context of relatively independent, inward-looking ‘world economies’, as Braudel described the economic world system prior to the 16th century. The dramatic growth of China’s economy is generating a profound shift in the global balance of power. This chapter will assess the extent to which the current rise of China, the relative economic decline of the US, and the rebalancing of the world economy can be compared to the erosion of British hegemony in the world economy after the Gründerkrise of 1873 and the rise of Wilhelmine Germany. In the last decade of the 19th century, the absence of an undisputed hegemonic power led to inter-imperialist rivalry that generated decades of international instability and two catastrophic global conflicts. It was only after the US established a clear hegemonic position within the capitalist economy after WWII that the world experienced only limited economic confrontations and avoided global military conflicts. Do the dramatic development of the Chinese economy and the structural weaknesses of the Western economies highlighted by the financial crisis of 2008 mark a turning point in the current US hegemony and a return to open great power rivalries and potential large-scale conflict? Various Western and Chinese analysts and media have drawn a historical parallel between the British-German rivalry that began in the 1890s and the Sino-American one that has been developing since the late 1990s. This chapter will attempt to assess the extent to which this analogy is relevant for understanding the current and future evolution of the global balance of power
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Defraigne, J.-C. (2014). • “Is China on the verge of a Weltpolitik? A comparison of the current shift in the balance of power between China and the West and the shift between Great Britain and Wilhelmine Germany”. In In Bart Dessein (Ed) (ed.), “Interpreting China as a Regional and Global Power: Nationalism and Historical Consciousness in World Politics” (p. p. pp293-323.). Palgrave Mc Millan. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/194520