What role does a rising China want to play on the global stage? Is China seeking to replace the United States as a new global leader? Will China build hegemonic power in Asia as well as worldwide? The emergence of a new great power is not only driven by its growing material capabilities but is also shaped by changing ideational factors such as norms and responsibilities. In China’s Global Identity, Hoo Tiang Boon has provided an empirically rich analysis of the evolution of China’s great power identity, showing that it must shoulder more responsibilities if it wants to consolidate its great power status.
Hoo demonstrates the sophisticated calculations and debates among Chinese elites regarding China’s emerging global identity. Focusing on elite discourse, he defines “global identity” as “the structure of ideas of political elites that related to their country’s role in the international system” (p. xvii). Since the 1990s, Chinese officials have frequently described China as a “Responsible Great Power” (RGP). In chapter 1, Hoo contextualizes China’s RGP identity from a historical perspective. He discusses three historical narratives: (1) the premodern central kingdom complex, (2) the weak China of the late Qing and Republican eras, and (3) the “great power awakening” of Maoist China. He also provides a brief survey of Chinese notions of responsibility from the ancient Chinese Empire to the contemporary era. In the remaining chapters, he analyzes China’s RGP identity in different periods: 1978–96, 1997–2004, 2005–12, and post-2013. The incipient phase of this process occurred in the early and mid-1990s as China started to pursue an RGP identity to achieve both some practical purposes and to enhance its social standing in the international community. During the period from 1997 to 2004, China’s RGP narratives were further expanded. From 2005 to 2012, China’s internal debate on its great power identity was further shaped by US policy, as well as by the global financial crisis. Instead of abandoning the RGP role, China in the Xi Jinping era has continued and even intensified that narrative. In particular, it has taken a more proactive approach to global governance.
Hoo highlights some key events that shaped the emergence of China’s great power identity. The Asian financial crisis in the 1990s encouraged China to pursue a more active role in East Asian regional cooperation. In 2005, the Bush administration encouraged China to become a “responsible stakeholder,” and the US pressure stimulated rethinking and debates on China’s great power responsibilities. The global financial crisis dramatically increased China’s global profile, moving it into the center of global economic governance. There was a growing international expectation for China to take on greater global responsibilities.
Three perspectives on international responsibility have now emerged in China: the internationalist, developmental, and skeptics’ position. The internationalist standpoint emphasizes that China should take on more global responsibilities as a rising great power. The developmental position advocates a more inward-looking perspective: China could take on some international responsibilities, but it should prioritize domestic obligations. The skeptics’ position is distrustful of the responsibility concept. It views the RGP discourse as a hidden agenda to constrain China through imposing international burdens or passing the buck. Hoo suggests that Chinese narratives have increasingly taken on an internationalist hue in the Xi Jinping era.
The book makes three significant contributions to our understanding of China’s great power identity. First, it opens an important window for scholars and policy makers to observe China’s evolving role on the global stage. In his effort to provide a comprehensive analysis of China’s great power identity, Hoo has used rich Chinese sources, including leadership accounts, government and party documents, newspapers, academic journals and books, and fieldwork in China. He also carefully triangulates various sources. Second, demonstrating the sophisticated nature of these debates within China, Hoo challenges the conventional monolithic view of the country. His study reveals the complex reality in contemporary Chinese thinking. China may be playing a more active role in global governance, but its great power identity is contested both domestically and internationally. Third, Hoo provides a rich historical context for understanding China’s great power identity. Most recent studies on the topic focus on the Chinese great power discourse only since the 1990s. However, Hoo demonstrates that there is a much deeper and longer historical context that shapes contemporary China’s great power identity. Through carefully examining historical materials, Hoo reveals more nuanced understandings of China’s historical legacy. For instance, he suggests that the Sino-centricity implied in the Central Kingdom perspective was more symbolic than substantive (pp. 2–3).
While recognizing the strengths and contributions of the book, let me offer four questions raised by my reading of it. First, are Chinese elites always interested in enhancing China’s great power status? Although he acknowledges that China has “other possible identities”—including that of a socialist country, the “third-world” identity, the developing country identity, and that of the historical victim—Hoo focuses on China’s great power identity. I wonder if Hoo has given sufficient attention to the inherent tensions between China’s great power identity and the country’s other identities, especially its developing country status.
Second, does China’s emphasis on its developing country identity only reflect “China’s level of economic development” (p. xxi)? Hoo might have underestimated the political motivations underlying China’s emphasis on its developing country status. The developing country status serves three instrumental purposes for China: to enable it to shirk increased international responsibilities, to consolidate solidarity within the developing world, and to reassure the established powers. Because of these instrumental reasons, China is unwilling to give up its developing country status even as it has become the second-largest economy in the world. In other words, developing country status is not just about China’s economic and social development, and there are important political calculations underlying China’s emphasis on it.
Third, what are the regularities that have shaped the evolution of China’s great power identity? I understand that Hoo’s primary purpose is not theory building and that his focus is on “unraveling the real-world puzzle of China’s responsible great-power identity” (p. 176). Hoo indeed has provided a penetrating analysis of China’s great power identity. I agree with him that China’s RGP identity is “animated by a blend of factors that go beyond just addressing image concerns” (p. 162). He identifies several factors to explain China’s great power identity, including the role of the United States and others, external events, instrumentalism, social aspirations, and domestic ideational influences (pp. 169–72). Some of these factors might be unique to the case of China, whereas other factors might reflect general long-term patterns. If readers want to understand the emergence of great power identity in general, does the case of China reflect any long-term trend? Hoo is absolutely right when he emphasizes an approach that “combines both sociological and rationalist elements” (p. 178). But we might push this argument even further: considering the interaction between material power and ideational change, we might hypothesize that China’s great power identity is largely correlated with its growing power and expanding interests on the global stage.
Finally, how significant a role does the United States play in shaping China’s great power identity? Admittedly the United States has shaped China’s foreign policy in general and its great power identity in particular. China seems to maintain an ambivalent “love-hate” attitude toward the United States. To become a great power, China loves to emulate the United States, but it also resents US “hegemonic” behaviors. While acknowledging the role of other external actors (p. 169), Hoo seems to overemphasize the United States’ dominant role in shaping China’s great power identity when, in reality, other actors have also played a crucial role. Any leading nation on the world stage must have some followers. To consolidate China’s great power identity, it must actively seek support from regional countries in Asia and the developing countries of the Global South. To engage in “soft-balancing” against the United States, China also is trying to build a strategic partnership with Russia and some European countries. As China seeks a new active role on the global stage, it becomes more debatable whether the United States still plays a dominant role in shaping China’s identity.
Despite these potential limitations, Hoo’s book has provided an insightful analysis of the evolution of China’s global identity. This book will help international scholars and policy makers to evaluate China’s foreign policy in years to come.
