Seminar Abstract

The existing liberal hegemonic order is essentially an American-led and Western-centered one. Its desirability and sustainability have been called into question due to a wide array of challenges and developments. The rise of China is both one of the driving forces behind the order transition, as well as a key determinant shaping the emerging order. This paper aims at discussing what kind of impact China may produce and how this will happen. Through examining China’s related ideas, concepts, and practices, it argues that China will search for a liberal partnership order, namely, that it will preserve and may even expand the liberal features of the order while curtailing its hegemonic nature. Instead of attempting to overturn the current order, China would pursue selective and incremental adjustments that overtime will lead to an order transition. Given the material, institutional and ideational constraints, China cannot shape the emerging order in the way that the U.S. did in the post-World War II period. Instead, order will change as a result of power-sharing rather than power transition, while the form and tempo of order transition will largely hinge on the outcome of Sino-US bargaining.

About the Speaker

Wu Xinbo is Professor and Dean, Institute of International Studies, and Director at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University.  He teaches and researches China’s foreign and security policy, Sino-U.S. relations, and U.S. Asia-Pacific policy.  Prof. Wu is the author of Dollar Diplomacy and Major Powers in China, 1909-1913 (Fudan University Press, 1997), award-winning Turbulent Water: US Asia-Pacific Security Strategy in the post-Cold War Era (Fudan University Press, 2006), Managing Crisis and Sustaining Peace between China and the United States (United States Institute of Peace, 2008), The New Landscape in Sino-U.S. Relations in the early 21st Century (Fudan University Press, 2011), and co-authored Asia-Pacific Regional Order in Transformation (Current Affairs Press, 2013), China and the Asia-Pacific Chess Game (Fudan University Press, 2017).

Prof. Wu has also published numerous articles and book chapters in China, U.S., Japan, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and India.  He is on the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly, European Journal of International Security and on the International Advisory Board of International Affairs. He was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk and served as its Vice-Chair (2012-13) and Chair (2013-14), and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-economics (2015-2016). He is currently a member on the Advisory Council of Asia Society Policy Institute, as well as a member of The Trilateral Commission.

Prof. Wu entered Fudan University in 1982 as an undergraduate student and received his B.A. in History in 1986.  In 1992, he got his Ph. D. in International Relations from Fudan University.  In the same year, he joined the Center for American Studies, Fudan University.  In 1994, he spent one year at the George Washington University as a visiting scholar.  In the fall of 1997, he was a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University and the Henry Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.  From January to August 2000, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution.   From September 2006 to July 2007, he was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.