Punctuated Equilibria and Sino-American Relations
Lulls and Lurches across the Pacific

Changes in international relations, just as in our daily lives, can come fast and furious. This book explains why.

Steve Chan (Author)

9781009634489, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 August 2025

296 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

In many areas of the natural and physical world, long periods of seeming stasis or small incremental changes are interrupted by large, sudden leaps. This book illustrates how similar processes characterize international relations. This book points to such occurrences, for example the collapse of the USSR, the unravelling of Napoleon's wartime alliance, and the possible future status of the US dollar; and it illustrates in greater detail the admission of China to the United Nations, the history of economic development of various countries, and the possible formation of a countervailing coalition against US primacy. Steve Chan investigates these instances and explains the dynamics governing these processes of lulls and lurches and illuminates how qualitative research can apply the Boolean logic to study systematically the danger of a possible future Sino-American conflict based on past episodes.

1. Introduction: the perspective of punctuated equilibrium
2. Punctuated equilibria: a review of political science literature
3. Epochal Breaks in sino-American relations, and lulls and lurches
4. Prospects of US intervention in a Taiwan crisis and the conjunctive logic
5. War, uneven economic growth, and trees don't grow to the Sky
6. Political entrepreneurship, narrative construction, and pitching the enemy image
7. Conclusion: from sino-American relations to the evolving global picture.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]