In this article I focus on whether China has been a hegemonic challenge (HC)Footnote ¹ in Latin America in recent years, and the potential for this to teach us something about the current dynamic between the United States and China.Footnote ² Power transition and hegemonic challenge are concepts that international relations scholars, policy makers and even pundits have used frequently in recent years to describe the dynamic interplay between the United States and China. This research explores previous instances of hegemonic challenge involving the United States in Latin America in order to provide a historical background to the possible current case of China–US relations.Footnote ³ To this end, it explores similarities and differences, and it also draws potential lessons from them.

A loose definition of hegemonic challenge is the following: a rising power defies the status quo created and/or sustained by a hegemonic power, seeking peer status or attempting to become the new hegemon. I do not deal with cases of resistance to the hegemon, or with those of refusal to accept hegemony by not-great powers.Footnote ⁴ Also, I do not deal with hegemonic challenges within Latin America, only those from external or extra-regional powers. In this context “hegemonic challenge” resembles more the international relations’ concepts of power transition (PT) and hegemonic stabilization theory (HST).Footnote ⁵ Nevertheless, despite this affinity, I will use HC and not PT or HST for several reasons. First, I want to avoid the narrow international relations realist discussions of the PT concept, and HC allows for broader theoretical perspectives and even multidisciplinary approaches; second, although I want to consider mainly the points of view of Washington and Beijing, I also intend to shed some light on the views of the Latin American countries that might be affected by the hegemonic challenge or even take advantage of its opportunities to pursue their own foreign policy objectives. Of course the existence, increase, decline or end of US hegemony in Latin America have produced an immense body of literature that cannot be discussed in detail here, and it is a central theme (if not the central theme) in the field study of US–Latin American relations studies. Hegemony and eventual challenges to it have continuously been relevant to the debates of policy makers and to public opinion in the region, more so than PT, which is mainstream in the capitals of both the hegemon and the potential challenger. In this regard, HC is a crucial structural aspect that has conditioned (but might also enable) the policy-making of Latin American countries.Footnote ⁶

It is also worth noting that paradoxically hegemony can also be perceived hegemony, and as such it functions as a context in which both the challenger and the Latin American countries act. Again, it is usually ex post facto that we have a more clear idea about the nature of phenomena and so it is normally the task of historians to clarify it. Even potential or probable hegemony or hegemonic challenge might be enough to deploy the powerful rhetoric device that creates an enabling framework for decision-making, and in certain cases it receives popular support. Where there is consensus that there is not a situation of (“real”) hegemony or of challenge, the potential of them can still have powerful consequences.Footnote ⁷

It is important to stress that perceived challenges to hegemonic power are almost as important as real ones, for two main reasons: first, it is usually difficult to distinguish between them in real time; and second (but connected), policy makers and states frequently act as if a challenge were real (particularly but not exclusively in the realm of security).Footnote ⁸ They prefer to err on the side of caution or to use – or even reinforce – the perception of challenge (or “threat”) for domestic or political reasons. They also frequently use it for domestic mobilization purposes.Footnote ⁹ This instrumental aspect has frequently been crucial in the Latin America context.Footnote ¹⁰ It can also be a widely shared perception or a more or less contested one. If a given state's foreign policy or economic foreign policy or activities are perceived as a hegemonic challenge, then this perception creates a framework for purposed action and policy. As an intersubjective phenomenon, it is in itself real and capable of producing effects.

In order to address the difficult question of whether China has been a HC in Latin America in recent years, and to try to distinguish more clearly real and perceived HCs, I will compare the current situation to previous instances of HC in Latin America. Methodologically, there are three major underlying assumptions in this exercise. First, regarding the scope, my concern is broadly with Latin America as a region, while being aware that effects on and reactions of individual countries may not conform exactly to the general pattern. Second, hegemonic challenges are thick historical phenomena that may continue for several years, and so the intensity and actions might show great variation and diversity. In the confined space of an article I will not be able to address these important variations.Footnote ¹¹ Furthermore, there is a “hegemonic presumption”Footnote ¹² most of the time in Latin America, but hegemony is not a constant phenomenon and also displays variation across space and time (see below). The third assumption is that, even accepting that each of the hegemonic challenges studied here were complex idiosyncratic historical events, treating them as instances of the same phenomenon might teach us something that could be useful to understand the current and future triangular relations between China, Latin American countries and the United States.Footnote ¹³

Instances of Hegemonic Challenge in Latin America

Extra-regional powers have been crucial in the region's history. Most of what we know today as Latin America was colonized by Spain, an extra-regional power, after 1492. It remained a colony (or a group of colonies) up to 1808, when Napoleon conquered Spain (Portugal conquered today's Brazil, and followed a different but well-known pattern and trajectory). This created an opportunity for local elites to take control, increase autonomy and finally achieve independence. In many cases, these elites sought the support of another extra-regional power, Great Britain (GB). In the 1820s London recognized the new republics, increasing its influence. Trade with Great Britain, however, began to grow only during the 1860s, and the quasi-empire reached density during the 1880s and 1890s. The United States successfully challenged Great Britain's hegemony, by consensus dated roughly to 1898, with victory in the American–Spanish war. It is important to note that the United States’ regional hegemony over the Western Hemisphere preceded the global pre-eminence that was achieved after the Second World War.Footnote ¹⁴ The transition between the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana was basically completed in the region well before it happened at a global level. Some factors shaped this hegemonic challenge: first, the nature of British imperialism in the region, one of “informal empire”Footnote ¹⁵ and a weak military capability (a textbook case of “overstretching”); and second, common democratic and cultural values of both challenger (USA) and hegemon (GB), with liberalism at the centre.Footnote ¹⁶ It can also be argued that this case, and later the case of Japan, are probably cases of “democratic peace theory.” The successful US challenge and the hegemonic transition was therefore a contested but peaceful one.

There have been five instances of hegemonic challenge in Latin America involving the United States (that is, in relations with the region): first, the US challenge to Great Britain at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century; second, Nazi Germany's challenge (and to lesser extent, Fascist Italy's) to the United States in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s; third, of course, the USSR's challenge to the United States; fourth, Japan's emergence in the 1980s and the perceived challenge to the United States; and finally, in this century, potentially, the current instance of China's rise and potential threat to the United States or its interests around the world. Of the five cases, in the first one the United States was the challenger; in the other four it was challenged.

I will concentrate on the cases in which the United States was challenged. Of this group, two were with European powers (Germany and the USSR) and the other two with Asian countries (Japan and China). I first review the status of China after the first decade of the century in Latin America. I then compare China to Japan and, subsequently, to the cases of the HC of Nazi Germany and the USSR, to draw comparisons and lessons that might be useful to understand the current situation, and to help distinguish between reality and perception.

China Challenges the United States?

The current situation between China and the United States might qualify as a new instance of HC in Latin America. The standard tool of theoretical analysis in the capitals of both countries is some version or adaptation of the power transition theory. In recent years, journalistic accounts that portray US–China relations as conflictive and even antagonistic have proliferated. These accounts reflect the ideas existing in many sectors of US society about the nature of the bilateral relationship, but also expand and reinforce them. In China, the view of the United States as a threat to China is also very popular. Wang Jisi said “they reverse the political scientist Samuel Huntington's argument that ‘the ideal enemy for America would be ideologically hostile, racially and culturally different, and militarily strong enough to pose a credible threat to American security’.”Footnote ¹⁷ It might be the case that an antagonistic relationship becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nevertheless, even if this position is taken, this analysis may still be useful in order to learn some lessons about how to prevent or mitigate the emergence of a potential conflict.

So far, it is a fact that China has frequently tried to reassure the United States of the non-confrontational nature of their relationship. In this century, the Chinese notion of “peaceful rise,” after an initial moment of full official endorsement, was downplayed because it was perceived in Beijing circles that in the United States and the so-called Western world there was more emphasis on “rise” than on “peaceful.” This terminology was soon replaced by “peaceful development” and by Hu Jintao's “harmonious world.”

The United States–China case differs crucially from the previous ones in that the United States and China have tried and are trying to institutionalize bilateral relations creating several mechanisms for an overarching dialogue. One that is most relevant here is the United States–China dialogue on Latin America, which started in 2006 during the Bush administration and continued during the Obama administration.Footnote ¹⁸ The timing of the beginning of the dialogue, just days before the visit of Hu Jintao to Washington DC on 18–22 April 2006, seems to indicate its importance. Although the public is aware of the existence of this dialogue, its content is still largely unknown.Footnote ¹⁹

Through my interviews and field research I can provide some general idea of the content, and some specific results of the dialogue. A central intention of both Beijing and Washington was to make clear to the other party their own interests and policy, to increase transparency and avoid miscalculations. For the United States one of the main concerns was China's relations with Chávez's Venezuela, while the Chinese were concerned with potential US interference with Cuba's political transition process. The dialogue is an extraordinary process, since the United States is giving China peer-status treatment in a region that it has considered of vital interest since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Together with making this concession full of symbolic value, the United States has used the dialogue to convey a message of concern and of limits to China's increasing engagement in the region. From Washington's point of view, the dialogue is considered to be a mechanism to shape and to influence China's role in the region.Footnote ²⁰ On the Chinese side, it offers an opportunity to reassure the United States over the stress in economic relations and to dispel any mistrust of potential political effects. There was a broad general agreement and a compromise to continue developing the institutionalization of this dialogue. So far, there have been four rounds of dialogue, the last one in 2010 during the current Obama administration.

Both countries took some modest measures to ensure that Latin American countries did not resent the dialogue taking place, and to dispel any suspicion of a G2 or “condominium” being negotiated. Chinese and US policy makers have had separate meetings with Latin American ambassadors for debriefing, in which they have explained their position regarding the dialogue, and commented superficially on some of the content. However, two of the ambassadors of very important Latin American countries whom I interviewed in Beijing were in private very concerned with the dialogue, and considered it as against their own countries’ sovereignty.

A crucial point is that the United States’ hegemony in Latin America is frequently perceived as a fact, as a given, practically treated as a constant, even for China, and as such it has an important effect on the crafting of China's own foreign policy. The deliberate Chinese effort to downplay “rise” and reassure the United States of Beijing's peaceful intentions around the world is compounded by the Chinese perception of US hegemony in Latin America and has had a powerful effect on Chinese foreign policy towards the region. This was why the bilateral dialogue on Latin America was so welcomed and encouraged by China. Chinese authors’ frequent statements describing Latin America as the “backyard” of the United States are clear evidence of this.

China has so far clearly exerted political restraint in the region, and the evidence that I have found shows that there is reasonable consistency between voiced policy and deeds. According to my interviews with three former cabinet ministers in Buenos Aires in 2008, 2009 and 2010, in November 2004 President Kirchner secretly requested Chinese financial support to pay the debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to “liberate” Argentina from the sticky supervision of its economic policies. The IMF is the institution that embodies Washington's policy towards the region, and was at the core of the so-called Washington Consensus. To help Kirchner would be to challenge the United States directly (for the record, Argentina paid the full debt with the IMF one year later using reserves), and China rejected the request.Footnote ²¹ In 2006, Venezuela sought a chair in the United Nations Security Council, an initiative that Washington tried to block (it did so successfully). China was very reluctant to support Chávez, but when it did, it voted for him without throwing its weight behind the campaign, as was clear in several of my interviews. The timing of the release of “China's Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean,” 5 November 2008, the first Chinese “white paper” on Latin America, was not a coincidence. They did not want to release it in the middle of the US presidential campaign so they waited until the day after the election (which was 4 November). Thus so far there seems to be consistency between Chinese proclaimed policy and concrete action in events in which its credibility was tested, preventing or reducing in this way the possibility of the growth and strengthening of a perception of HC.

Japan Challenges the United States

In order to understand more clearly China's current situation in Latin America, it is useful first to compare it with the challenge that the rise of Japan posed to the United States.Footnote ²² It was the last and most recent challenge (real or perceived) to the United States, and it was the only one between the United States and an Asiatic power. When the USSR's perceived threat was fading, Japan began to be quite seriously considered as a possible strategic rival by the United States, a perspective that today, with the benefit of historical record, seems strange. It is one of the most interesting cases to assess, because it was probably more a case of perceived challenge than a real one (real also in the sense that there was not a deliberate policy on the Japanese side to threaten the United States’ hegemony in the region). Nevertheless, particularly when Japan achieved the status of the second largest economy in the world, many alarms rang in Washington. Ezra F. Vogel wrote in 1979 an influential book entitled Japan as Number One, and in 1986 he speculated on a possible Pax Nipponica in a frequently quoted article in Foreign Affairs.

There is an evident affinity of the Japanese case with that of China as both economies were seen as unstoppable, threatening US supremacy in this realm. It was not, however, a case of ideological challenge, and Japan is a democracy (like Great Britain but, more important, unlike China). At the centre of the fear was a perceived connection between economic capability and potential development of military power, something that today is clearly linked to the case of China.Footnote ²³ The deterioration of the relationship, of course, received a lot of attention of scholars and policy makers, as well as pundits. The relative economic decline of the United States at the beginning of the 1990s and the emergence of Japan caused “many US citizens to view Japan as a competitor or potential adversary instead of an ally,” according to Kaufman Purcell and Immerman, and the same authors added that “Latin American governments generally have welcomed the greater interest and more active role of Japan in the region, not only because of their hunger for Japanese capital, but also because of their long-standing efforts to reduce their economic dependence on the “Colossus of the North.”Footnote ²⁴ Stallings and Székely posited that “in economic terms, although not politically or militarily, Japan has come to rival the United States and has surpassed any single European nation.”Footnote ²⁵

An important issue of this period was that the consideration of Latin America as the “backyard” of the United States was an accepted idea in Japan (and, later, in South Korea). It is an important legacy and antecedent of Chinese foreign policy towards the region, although for different reasons. The idea of “backyard” has at least two aspects: one the geographical contiguity with the territory of United States, and the other used as a shortcut for hegemony, that is, not just a neighbouring space but an area where power is exercised at will and without interference. There is an immediate sense of déjà-vu when we compare the cases of Chinese and Japanese foreign policy towards the region. I contend, however, that beyond obvious similarities there is an important difference. In my view, Japanese actions usually follow the pattern already established by the United States in most areas, but more importantly they even support Washington's policies.Footnote ²⁶ Important evidence for this is the Japanese support for the efforts to restructure the external debt after the crisis of 1982, and after the “lost decade” of the 1980s.Footnote ²⁷ China's idea of the “backyard” seems at best to be limited to more-or-less restraining itself and not interfering openly with the United States; it is difficult to find a case in which China has actively and directly helped the United States. In other words, to not interfere is not the same as to support.

The Latin America interest in having alternative sources of capital during the rise of Japan is also similar to the region's interest in the current phase of the rise of China. The aforementioned case of Kirchner's request is a good example. Further evidence is provided by the switch in recognition of Costa Rica from Taipei to Beijing, which was sweetened with the Chinese purchase of $300 million of Costa Rica's bonds.

However, there are important potential differences between Japan and China in the security realm. There remains today a close security relationship between Japan and the United States (in fact, there are still US bases on Japanese territory). In the case of China, the situation of Taiwan is a possible trigger for the use of force, with the potential to escalate. Furthermore, China is building military capability and projection means that might be used one day in Latin America, if needed; nevertheless, it is still far from the level required to overcome the massive resources that the United States might display in so close a region. Any US direct engagement in a potential open conflict in Taiwan might well trigger a change in China's policy towards Latin America, opposed or less favourable to the United States, and putting to use new assets and advantages acquired in the region. Even a diplomatic retaliation or operation of diversion can be deployed with important effects.

It is possible to argue that the explanation of why the rise of Japan never reached the level of conflict of the previous two (Nazi Germany and the USSR) is “democratic peace theory” (like in the case of Great Britain), but compared with Japan, China is clearly dissimilar on this. The economic stagnation of Japan in the 1990s caused its demise as a serious contender for primacy with the United States, in the eyes of both public opinion and policy makers. As in the case of the Soviet Union, the hegemonic challenge ended for internal causes in Japan, the idea of Japan's threat faded in the mind of policy planners in the United States, and disappeared unnoticed by the media and the public.

Nazi Germany Challenges the United States

It is also important to compare China with the other two cases of HC of major illiberal states, Nazi Germany and later the USSR. A major instance of hegemonic challenge – and the first one against the United States – was the growing influence of Nazi Germany and the challenge to the Monroe Doctrine in several countries of Latin America (including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia) during the 1930s and even during the Second World War. According to Nancy Mitchell “at the turn of the century … the idea of a German challenge to the Monroe Doctrine became lodged in American minds.”Footnote ²⁸ At the core of the relations between Nazi Germany and Latin American countries was trade, which expanded at a high rate up to 1939.Footnote ²⁹ Some of the most important partners were Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. According to Blasier, US perceptions of German influence in Mexico were correct.Footnote ³⁰ After 1935, the single most important item of Germany's exports to the region was arms. The Second World War was a blow to this profitable trade. In addition, the framing of good and evil was a signature of the period.Footnote ³¹ The same kind of approach was applied later to an entirely different kind of challenge, that of the Soviet Union, which had its origins during this time.

These two issues, the arms trade and the framing of good versus evil, have been since then potential milestones in the “rise” of a challenger and important markers of rivalry. The arms trade worried Washington and made Germany very suspicious. If a challenger “rise” opens a window of opportunity for Latin American countries, then a “good versus evil” framing creates a situation in which they cannot “diversify” and must choose, in true realism fashion, between pure balancing and bandwagoning.

German people or those of German ethnic origin were harassed and spied on. In several Latin American countries German (and also Japanese) settlements were displaced by force, national authorities being forced by the United States. It was of course a tense situation that created the conditions for these extreme measures. Nevertheless, this historical example is relevant today: the existence of several Chinese communities currently in Latin America risks exposure to instances of racism beyond individual expressions or open political hostility.Footnote ³² This, in turn, might trigger China's efforts to protect the diaspora. So, for four decades or so, the perception of a German threat in Latin America was crucial in shaping US foreign policy towards the region. There were ups and downs, but the image persisted almost untouched.Footnote ³³ An example of how a country used the rise of a challenger for its own benefit was Mexico, when in 1938 it nationalized the oil industry. Although most of the nationalized companies were American, the United States reacted in a mild way, careful not to push Mexico to Germany's side.Footnote ³⁴

As a result of the influence of this period of hegemonic challenge, and because it was beginning to see on the horizon a new and bigger one, the United States promoted the creation of the Organization of American States in 1948, the oldest regional grouping of this kind, and later, the Inter American Development Bank. It also created the Caribbean Command in 1947 (successor to the US Caribbean Defense Command, 1941–47), and the South Command on 6 June 1963, with headquarters first in Panama and now in Florida. For the record, the United States resurrected the US Fourth Fleet on July 2008; it is based on Mayport, Florida, and is under the control of the Southern Command. The move was highly resisted by Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, among others.

This case was the first to introduce a factor that was also very important in the challenges of the USSR and Japan: the perception of threat, the utility of manipulation of threat, and the gap between what really happened and the policies implemented. In the United States, real elements were greatly exaggerated to push domestic public opinion in a certain direction, and to discipline unco-operative allies. A very important theme that has its origin in this period is the use, in the United States, of the portrait of the challenge as one of “Good versus Evil,” also used later in the case of the rivalry with the USSR. On the Latin American side, a relevant issue was anti-Americanism, present at one time or another in most parts of the region, an important factor also in our next cases.

In this period several Latin America countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina were able to obtain benefits from the opportunities created by German interest in the region.Footnote ³⁵ However, when the great power rivalry openly crossed the line between economics and security (or, better, between peace and war), attachment to German trade or neutrality proved to be very costly,Footnote ³⁶ and bandwagoning with the United States, as in the case of Brazil, produced tangible benefits for years. These are issues that we must also keep in mind when analysing the growing presence of China in Latin America.

The USSR Challenges the United States

This section compares China with another non-democratic state, the USSR, vis-à-vis the United States and the relationship with Latin American countries. The USSR was the second instance of hegemonic challenge to the United States in Latin America.Footnote ³⁷ This was also the longest (1945–91) sour and bloody challenge in the region, seriously affecting almost all the countries in one form or another, and the one that first comes to mind when discussing the topic of hegemonic challenge in the region. Millet traces US “preoccupation, both actual and rhetorical” with the USSR to 1924.Footnote ³⁸ According to Gaddis, Dulles traced it back to Tsar Alexander I and argued that this was one of the reasons for the enacting of the Monroe Doctrine.Footnote ³⁹ Whatever the actual origin, perception of rivalry can have a long brewing process, and this is a relevant factor for today's case of China. The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (also known as TIAR, in Spanish, or Rio Treaty) signed on 2 September 1947 consolidated a security alliance in the region (even before NATO was created on 4 April 1949). On 30 April 1948, in Bogotá, the Organization of American States was created.

In the 1950s, Guatemala and Cuba renewed Washington's concern with the USSR. A CIA-sponsored coup d’état ended the Arbenz experiment in 1954 in Guatemala, and in 1959 the Cuban Revolution with the Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara claimed victory over Batista. The CIA's Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 was a major failure in controlling the communist revolution (so close to US territory, just 90 miles), and showed the limit of Washington's power. “Losing Cuba” looms large for generations of American policy-makers. Containment (coined by George F. Kennan in 1946) became the core of the United States strategy during the Cold War.Footnote ⁴⁰ The domino theory emphasized the prevention of any single country becoming communist, and so it constituted the key of Washington's policy towards the area. According to Snyder, “the domino theory, in one form or another, has been the central organizing concept behind American containment strategy,” and he posited that “there is a tendency to see tight connections between threats to the periphery and to the core of an empire.”Footnote ⁴¹

Humanity was at its closest point to nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.Footnote ⁴² The crisis was resolved by both superpowers, neglecting the role of Fidel Castro, something that showed the limits for agency of small countries in the region. At the end of the decade, Cuba had become more dependent on the USSR, and intervened in proxy wars outside the region. Lourdes and Bejucal became some of the most important Soviet bases in the world,Footnote ⁴³ monitoring US communications and naval movements in the Caribbean and the Atlantic.Footnote ⁴⁴ Nevertheless, Castro resented the fact that the Soviets negotiated the crisis without asking his opinion. Latin American countries learned a hard lesson: pushing diversification too much, and turning it to pure balancing, has the effect of just changing one type of hegemony (and dependency) for another one, certainly an undesirable situation. This lesson looms large for the region's policy makers and is relevant still today.

The Cold War was not so cold in the region. According to Gaddis, “many people then saw the Cold War as a contest of good versus evil, even if historians since have rarely done so”Footnote ⁴⁵ (italics are mine). Ideology was a central element in this hegemonic challenge, and communism was seen as a direct attack on capitalism and democracy. In Latin America, anti-Americanism was one of the central themes of the period, and it was used by the USSR, with diverse success. As Moscow soon discovered, however, anti-Americanism does not necessarily equate to a pro-Soviet or pro-communist attitude. This is also a factor of which Chinese policy makers must be acutely aware.

The hegemonic challenge produced a strong impact in the region. Several civil wars – in fact, proxy wars – were fought on the region's soil in the context of the Cold War. Coup d’états and violations on human rights were committed because of the context of this hegemonic challenge, and political (in)stability was more important than democracy.Footnote ⁴⁶ It is only necessary to mention Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Grenada, Salvador Allende's rise through democratic elections, and fall at Pinochet's will, as well as the long dictatorships, military governments and “Juntas” in many countries in the region.

Yet looking at Soviet foreign policy, with the benefit of the archival material now available, it is now known that involvement was cautious and watchful, even in the more intense years of the 1970s and 1980s. In Latin America countries, internal sectors that favoured the USSR for ideological reasons were frequently disappointed with its lack of sustained commitment.Footnote ⁴⁷ In 1987, the USSR was advised not to stretch its resources and ambition too much in Latin America.Footnote ⁴⁸ It seems clear to me that the Chinese are very aware that their resources and power, although growing, cannot be stretched at present. On the other hand, many Latin American countries wanted to develop relations with the USSR, even those that do not want to copy the political system, or to be under Soviet influence, an insight that is valid today in the relations with China.Footnote ⁴⁹

Blasier stressed that the Soviet Union's main interest in the region was trade, but also recognition. It is important to note that recognition was (is) also very important in the two Asian cases: in the case of Japan, at the time when it signed the first treaties with Latin American countries (at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, well before it became a challenger of the United States); in the case of China, because of its protracted struggle with Taiwan (roughly half of the countries that still recognize Taiwan are in the region).