Recentering Pacific Asia
Regional China and World Order

Argues that China's roots are in Pacific Asia, and its response to regional challenges will ultimately determine its global prospects.

Brantly Womack (Author), Wang Gungwu (Contributions by), Wu Yu-Shan (Contributions by), Qin Yaqing (Contributions by), Evelyn Goh (Contributions by)

9781009393812, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 August 2023

300 pages
28 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.664 kg

'How will the asymmetric rivalry between global US and regional China play out in a multinodal world shaped by local agency? In Recentering Pacific Asia, Womack historicizes the centrality of Pacific Asia in analytical depth and challenges us to rethink the future of world order by taking seriously the asymmetric parity power dynamics in 'China's region.' Insightful, provocative, and timely, it compels us to think differently about Pacific Asia as central to global order transition.' Yongjin Zhang, Professor of International Politics, University of Bristol

The Pacific Rim of Asia – Pacific Asia – is now the world's largest and most cohesive economic region, and China has returned to its center. China's global outlook is shaped by its regional experience, first as a pre-modern Asian center, then displaced by Western-oriented modernization, and now returning as a central producer and market in a globalized region. Developments since 2008 have been so rapid that future directions are uncertain, but China's presence, population, and production guarantee it a key role. As a global competitor, China has awakened American anxieties and the US-China rivalry has become a major concern for the rest of the world. However, rather than facing a power transition between hegemons, the US and China are primary nodes in a multi-layered, interconnected global matrix that neither can control. Brantly Womack argues that Pacific Asia is now the key venue for working out a new world order.

Introduction
1. Continuities in China's Pacific Asian centrality
2. Thin connectivity: traditional Chinese centrality
Commentary Wang Gungwu
3. Sharp connectivity: Western modernization and de-centered Pacific Asia
Commentary Wu Yu-Shan
4. Thick connectivity: the re-centering of Pacific Asia
Commentary Qin Yaqing
5. China, Pacific Asia, and reconfiguring a multinodal world
Commentary: Evelyn Goh
6. Global power rivalry, Pacific Asia, and world order.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]