The Structural Frame of Sino-U.S. Relations

Abstract

Dealing with the research issue and the research design of the thesis (as well as giving a review of respective scholarly literature), Chapter One has highlighted the ongoing, vibrant debate in the academia, policy circles and the media/public on the rise of China and the (post-Cold War/future) relationship with the hegemonic United States, and has indicated the two most influential (grand) theory perspectives therein. Naturally, it has been the rapid increase and huge potential of Chinese, and the slower relative growth of U.S. capabilities as well as the extent of Sino-U.S. interdependence that has stimulated this vivid deliberation and provided it with a global momentousness. The neoliberal-neorealist divide thereby makes clear that scholars’ differing points of view partly result on the one hand from diverging ontological assumptions about the essence of the (social) world, the trans- and international system, and state action therein (Goldstein 2007: 639; Keohane/Nye 1989: 23; Christensen 2006: 81f.). On the other hand, participants in the debate also vary in their interpretation of the numerous empirical parameters on Sino-U.S. interdependence, capabilities, and their extrapolation to the future.