The Jade Straitjacket: Measuring Reactions to China’s Rise

Herrera Felipe ()
Additional contact information
Herrera Felipe: Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20057-0004USA

New Global Studies, 2020, vol. 14, issue 1, 24-46

Abstract: Since the Cold War, the Global South has become the basis of China’s political, economic, and military interests, as well as the major theater of China’s power competition with the United States. It is thus necessary to recognize how developing states have responded to changes in the international system brought on by China’s rise. Given the tide of nativism opposing trade and globalization, mostly studied through a Western lens, this study extends the analysis to the attitudes of the Global South. I outline the Western reaction to China’s rise to differentiate the factors that provoke backlash in the developed and developing world. Analyzing the relationship between China’s economic engagement and the degree of anti-China sentiment in a given region, as compared to the same relationships for the United States, I provide an amendment to Friedman’s “Golden Straitjacket” thesis to better understand China’s role in the processes of globalization and discuss the implications of the relationship between trade and domestic attitudes on the liberal theory of trade interdependence and conflict. I argue that since China’s “Jade Straitjacket” is a destabilizing force that provokes negative backlash stronger than reactions to American trade based on the findings of this study, policymakers must contend with the disconnect between elites who make the decision to don the straitjacket and domestic audiences who react adversely to the societal ramifications of these decisions.

Keywords: globalization; trade interdependence; Global South; great power competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2019-0022 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:nglost:v:14:y:2020:i:1:p:24-46:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ngs/html

DOI: 10.1515/ngs-2019-0022

Access Statistics for this article

New Global Studies is currently edited by Nayan Chanda, Akira Iriye and Saskia Sassen

More articles in New Global Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().