In 2006, Robert Ross argued that when a rising power can impact the security of a smaller state, the lesser states will accommodate rather than balance the new dominant power. His research was on the impact of the rise of China on secondary states in East Asia. I am looking for examples and literature on this phenomenon in South or Southeast Asia.
What a fantastic resource! I appreciate you attaching the full-text of this book. I agree with the OBOR example through Southeast Asia. Economic partnership between Thailand and China has expanded significantly since the 2014 coup, but this is seen as a bit of balancing. It's also seen as legitimizing behavior on the part of the junta, because without the Chinese investment, the Thai economy would have grown at a much slower pace.
Dear Prof Mark Cogan, i'am very much interested in this topic. The impact of the rise of China on states in Asia has a long historical background that are inter-related with the current conflict in Southeast Asia ( particularly the territorial disputes in the South China Sea).
Right now i'am focusing on reading some of these sources.
1. Ralph Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, Westview, Boulder, Colo., 1993.
2. Wang Gungwu, ‘Early Ming relations with Southeast Asia: a background
essay’ in The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign
Relations, ed. John King Fairbank, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1968.
3. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1995.
Thank you. Looking forward to other related sources.
Thank you for your comment. It's surely an interesting topic and I will check out some of these sources that you recommended. However, more specifically, I am interested not so much on how states bandwagon or balance against China, but how they accommodate China.
Dear Mark and readers,
Whether here or in another place, this interesting question could be expanded to compass a more global scope.
It seems to me that Switzerland and another even smaller European nation, Liechtenstein, meet the description of small States that accommodate China.
Switzerland participates in OBOR. Austria and Switzerland together furnish a strategic link in the North-South OBOR corridor extending from The Netherlands and Germany to Italy. By this means, OBOR extends from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean Sea, through which East African OBOR participants such as Kenya advantageously may be reached.
Please refer to the works by Associate Professor Dr. Cheng-Chwee KUIK (RG: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cheng_Chwee_Kuik), who is the foremost scholar on responses by the smaller states in Southeast Asia towards big powers (especially on China).
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