Tracing the modes of China's revisionism in the Indo-Pacific: a comparison with pre-1941 Shōwa Japan

Abstract

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has irrefutably reached ‘great power’ status. As a consequence, most studies argue that it has adopted a revisionist posture towards the US-led international order. However, this image tells us little about Beijing's revisionist strategy, particularly whether it is revolutionary or incremental and what this implies in terms of actual policies. The current article posits that the PRC is behaving as an incremental revisionist and aims at tracing its modes. To verify this hypothesis, the analysis focuses on Beijing's policies towards its regional security order. In this light, it diachronically compares post-Cold War China (1989–2019) with the paradigmatic case of a revolutionary revisionist in the Indo-Pacific region: Shōwa Japan in the Interwar period (1926–1941). The findings offer a helpful contribution to the literature, providing the foundation for a more nuanced theoretical definition of incremental revisionism.

Revisiting the modes of China's revisionism: a comment on Natalizia and Termine

“…Broad consensus exists among Western scholars of contemporary international politics that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is now a revisionist great power. Nevertheless, as Natalizia and Termine (2021) cogently argue, simply asserting that the PRC displays a revisionist posture towards the world says nothing useful about the types of policies Beijing pursues. Some revisionist states take steps to overturn the existing order at one bold stroke, most often by exercising military force; others push for incremental alterations in the structures, institutions and procedures that comprise the status quo, usually through sustained persuasion and positive inducements (Gilpin, 1981).…”

“…Some revisionist states take steps to overturn the existing order at one bold stroke, most often by exercising military force; others push for incremental alterations in the structures, institutions and procedures that comprise the status quo, usually through sustained persuasion and positive inducements (Gilpin, 1981). Alternatively, revisionist states can be differentiated according to whether they envisage fundamental change in the global arena as a whole, or instead in some particular geographical region (see also Pisciotta, 2020; Natalizia and Termine, 2021: 87).…”

The legacy of Admiral von Tirpitz: a geopolitical understanding of China's naval buildup through sea-denial strategies

“…Likewise, nationalism would have led Imperial Germany's naval arms race vis-à-vis Britain and Japan's simultaneous pursuit of continental and maritime power in East Asia in the early 20th century. Today, China is following the same scheme – albeit reversed – followed by Japan a century before (Natalizia and Termine, 2021) by combining land power with sea power and naval nationalism would explain this trend.…”

Building a more robust framework on revisionism: a reply to Lawson and Legrenzi

“…We would like to express our gratitude to Fred Lawson and Matteo Legrenzi for the accurate discussion to our work on the modes of post-Cold War Chinese revisionism (Lawson and Legrenzi, 2022), published by Italian Political Science Review (Natalizia and Termine, 2021). Their constructive critique allowed us to reconsider not only some aspects of the article but has also given insightful suggestions for our broader research program on the struggle between conservative and revisionist powers (Termine and Natalizia, 2020;Natalizia, 2021;Termine, 2021;Natalizia and Carteny, 2022), whose middle-term purpose is to provide a more detailed typology of revisionism and to bring out the different modes of pursuing international change.…”

“…Indeed, each revisionist state outlines its peculiar strategyone that combines different and frequently substitutable means of foreign policyto challenge the status quo. The most pernicious consequence of this void is to expect that contemporary China will inescapably turn to a large-scale challenge against the international distribution of the resources and to the rejection of the existing normative architecture, following the footsteps of the most influential radical challengers of the past, such as the Nazi Germany, late Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union (Natalizia and Termine, 2021). To avoid this fatal mistake, our RISP/IPSR article refers to Robert Gilpin's seminal distinction between 'revolutionary' and 'incremental' revisionists (Gilpin, 1981), However, also this original distinction still risks being fuzzy.…”