How the Rise of China Will Be Different: Historical Analysis of Previous Power Transitions

Abstract

Three historical cases may suggest how China’s rise could be peaceful. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 as a failed engagement may prove the importance of true “modernization” as a nation rises. A culturally peaceful transition (the following part will explain, also this leadership between Great Britain and the United States in the 1940s suggests that the United States should try to find shared preferences or “commonalities” with an emergent China. The structurally peaceful economic competition between the United States and Japan in the 1970s and the 1980s may suggest that these two powers should substantially cooperate and engage with each other in international institutions. Further, the collapse of former Soviet Union shows how excessive competition caused a great power to fail.