| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The conviction that economic ties will engender peace is a lynchpin of US strategy, but Asian leaders view failure to protect territorial claims as worse than the losses associated with a limited war. The conviction that economic ties will engender peace in Asia has been a lynchpin of the US strategic response to a rising China for over two decades. When the US-China Relations Act of 2000 passed under President Bill Clinton, proponents of the measure argued that increased Sino-American trade would contribute to China's peaceful rise because Beijing would reject revisionism while it benefitted from the US-led world order. As one US senator commented at the time, 'the world will be a safer place - or so we hope, and so history argues'. Later, President George W. Bush described the exchange of 'many handshakes of friendship and commerce' between the American and Chinese people as enhancing understanding and therefore peace. Moreover, many of his closest advisers hoped that Chinese economic growth would eventually result in a rising middle class that would demand political freedoms and compel reform of the one-party Communist system. Most recently, President Barack Obama extolled the benefits of China's growing economic clout, declaring that 'a peaceful and stable and prosperous China is not only good for Chinese but also good for the world and for the United States'.
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