Abstract
Power is defined in this book as the ability to achieve and/or sustain a desired goal. It is seen as an issue-specific ability, and it should not be mistaken for sources of power, exercise of power, or influence. Assessing the power of an actor by looking at its sources of power and outcomes is the best available method for approximations of the actual power. To take into account all potentially relevant sources of power, three levels of power sources will be considered—the state, international, and societal levels. One should consider the specific intentions of the given country, for different policy goals may require different sets of power sources. In this thesis, altogether eight areas of power will be considered to form a sufficiently comprehensive assessment of the examined actor’s power.
In the critical engagement with the published works on China’s power, it was shown that even literature which deals directly with China’s power does not necessarily present the full and up-to-date story. It can be suggested that the topic of China’s power and its influence on its foreign policy in general, and after 2008 in particular, is significantly under-researched. Based on the conceptual understanding of power and the discussion of China’s power, it is argued here that it is mainly due to a lack of rigorous and comprehensive work with the key concept of power both within the China watchers’ community and among scholars of international relations in general.
Parts of this chapter appeared previously in Richard Q. Turcsányi, ‘Assessing the Power of China: Insights from the Conceptual Thinking about Power,’ Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2017.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
However, this does not mean everyone thinks the gap between China and the USA is narrowing down; e.g. see Michael Beckley (2011, pp. 41–78).
- 3.
See, e.g., Robert G. Sutter (2012), Deng and Wang (2010), Gill Bates (2010), Rex Li (2008). In the Czech context, one of the very first publications dealing with the international relations in the Indo-Pacific region also contains the key words of the Chinese (and Indian) rise: see Rudolf Fürst (2011).
- 4.
- 5.
For an excellent collection of all known quantitative measurements of power, see Karl Hermann Höhn (2011).
- 6.
- 7.
Cited in Steven Lukes (2005 pp. 20–25).
- 8.
See Fig. 3.1 for the scheme of power and related concepts.
- 9.
See the relevant chapters in Tellis et al. (2015).
- 10.
The scheme of asymmetrical interdependence and the concepts of sensitivity and vulnerability have been significantly developed by Keohane and Nye (1977).
- 11.
The idea of using trade for political goals is not new and has been in the discipline of international economy at least since the publication of Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1945).
- 12.
See Table 3.1 for the scheme of three levels and eight areas of sources of power.
- 13.
Shortly before the manuscript of this book was finalized, a new highly relevant book on the topic of China’s power appeared; see Enrico Fels (2017). The contribution of this book is going to be discussed at the very end of this section.
- 14.
Actually, it can be argued that Fels implicitly signalled here some problems with his treatments of the second and the third understandings of power. Based on the power model presented here, his chapters discussing middle powers are not that much about relational power as about structural power.
- 15.
Indeed, some findings of Fels will be used at appropriate places of this book.
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Turcsányi, R.Q. (2018). A Comprehensive Concept of Power in International Relations. In: Chinese Assertiveness in the South China Sea. Global Power Shift. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67648-7_3
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