Economic Interdependence and Rising Power Grand Strategies: China and Germany

• In Event: Economic Sanctions and Retaliation

Abstract

Compared to historical rising powers such as Bismarckian Germany, China does not use force as often as historical rising powers, prefers coercion instead of force, tends to resort to nonmilitarized coercive tools, and prefers strategic partnerships as opposed to formal alliances. China exhibits a curious pattern of using nonmilitarized means to achieve its grand strategic ends. What explains China’s divergent path compared to Germany under Bismarck? Specifically, how does global economic interdependence impact rising powers’ grand strategies? Do current global production and supply chains provide different incentives to contemporary rising powers’ grand strategies?

The literature on grand strategy tends to be siloed: there is rich literature explaining and evaluating China’s grand strategy as well as extensive literature on the grand strategy of the United States and historical great powers, but rarely do they interact. There is also a rich literature on economic interdependence centering on the debate of whether the “commercial peace” proposition holds for a rising China. Therefore, this paper intends to apply theories in international political economy to examine rising powers’ grand strategic choices, comparing China’s grand strategy against Bismarckian Germany’s grand strategy. It employs qualitative methods such as process tracing and congruence testing, leveraging rich empirical evidence, including primary Chinese documents and interviews with Chinese and foreign officials, as well as historiographies, economic data, and archival documents on Germany. It argues that different levels of and the changing nature of global economic interdependence explain the divergent grand strategy paths between China and historical rising powers. Economic interdependence in the form of global production and supply chains both constrains and enables China’s grand strategic behavior.

Author

• Ketian Zhang, George Mason University