China, Faits Accomplis and the Contest for East Asia

The Shadow of Shifting Power

Joshua Hastey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000875362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores China's use of faits accomplis in its periphery, and offers the first formal model for the use of faits accomplis by rising powers.

With growing attention to great power competition and conflict in the gray zone between war and peace, this book explains China's use of faits accomplis to revise the maritime status quo in the South and East China Seas. Using formal modelling and case study analysis, the book argues that while power shifts provide rising states with opportunities to impose faits accomplis to revise the status quo, the use of faits accomplis also increase the likelihood of war with the dominant state(s). The book surveys existing understandings of how power shifts incentivize interstate competition in general and in the case of Sino-American competition in particular, and brings existing theory and novel modelling to explain China's differing strategies in the South and East China Seas in the first two decades of the 21st century. The book concludes by using the lessons from these cases to assess the strategic options available to both states and conditions that make a peaceful resolution more likely.

This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese politics, Asian security studies and International Relations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Lists of figures
• List of tables
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Faits Accomplis: A Blind Spot in Security Studies
• 3 Modeling Faits accomplis in the Shadow of Shifting Power
• 4 Deciding to Seize: China’s Territorial Disputes in the South China Sea
• 5 Deciding Not to Seize: China’s Territorial Disputes in the East China Sea
• 6 Faits Accomplis, Costs of Revision, and the South and East China Seas
• 7 Conclusions and Implications
• References
• Appendices
• Index