Seeing Eye to Eye: A Constructivist Explanation of Sino-American Cooperation
20 Pages Posted: 7 Sep 2009 Last revised: 8 Sep 2009
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
China’s rise to superpower status and how the US will adapt to the inevitable end to its position as the hegemon of a unipolar international system is one of the most fascinating conundrums facing political scientists. Thirty years after the normalization of bilateral relations and despite occasional disagreements, Sino-American relations are developing without intractable problems. In this paper, I seek to analyze cooperation between China and the US during the President Bush and President Obama administrations through the prism of constructivist theory. I argue that China and the US have advanced their relationship primarily because of their respective corporate identities and the social identity developed by each of them to deal with the other. These identities and how they are perceived are deep-rooted in American and Chinese psyches and date back to their first encounters in the late 18th century and early 19th century.
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