China's Win-Win Globalization

Since the early 1990s, China has been making a concerted effort to integrate itself into the world economy and cultivate relations with its Asian neighbors, as well as the U.S., in order to promote stability and prosperity in the region. Michael Yahuda, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains how China's stance towards globalization has changed over the past century, and how its recent embrace of globalization has led to a greater commitment to East Asian security. – YaleGlobal

China's Win-Win Globalization

For China, embracing globalization means a greater commitment to regional security in East Asia

Michael Yahuda

YaleGlobal, 19 February 2003

Fast food in Beijing, rapid integration with the world economy. (Copyright: Nayan Chanda, YaleGlobal)

LONDON: The impact of globalization has on the whole served to enhance rather than to weaken security in East Asia, but as elsewhere, it has also added new dimensions to the nature of security that have greatly complicated the situation. As the rising power of East Asia, China may be said to have benefited in the post Cold War period from both American primacy and from the effects of globalization. The former provided the peaceful international environment and the international public goods that have enabled the Chinese to focus on an export-led strategy of rapid economic development and the latter has facilitated China's integration into the regional and international economies. As a result, China has become less of a challenger to the status-quo in East Asia and more of a net contributor to regional order - at least in the short to medium term.

The term 'globalization' has been used in many ways to outline changes in social, political and military spheres, but these are derived from economic change where the basis of production and of finance are said to have shifted from the confines of national boundaries to encompass the world as a whole....