The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

would be responsible to the world, they argued, but
not just to the United States and the West alone. They
also pointed out that although the responsible stakeholder
designation suggested that the United States
welcomed China into the “club of great powers,”
China would still be treated differently; it would be
an insider in name but an outsider in fact for a long time
to come. China would be better served to continue its
tao-guang yang-hui and focus on its development. 63
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3
1. Li Hongzhang (李鸿章), “筹议海防折” (“On Coastal Defense”),
李鸿章全集 (Complete Works of Li Hongzhang), Tianjin,
China: Baihua Wenyi Chubanshe, 2000.
2. Similar to the isolated Qing Dynasty, Japan had a “Closed
Country Edict” prohibiting Japanese contact with the outside
world during the Tokugawa period from 1836 to 1860 when
the Meiji Reformation was launched. Also similar to the forced
opening of Qing China, Japan encountered the U.S. intruder,
Commodore Matthew C. Perry, and his Black Ships in 1853. The
Americans demanded the opening of Japan to foreign trade and
commerce.
3. See China Modernization Report, 2008, Beijing, China: Beijing
University Press, 2008. Specifically, the Report notes that Japan
positively pursued learning from the West and transformation
in an all-round way whereas China held reservations especially
on the socio-political aspects of change and lost the opportunity
to modernize properly (p. iv). See also Barrington Moore’s classic
discussion in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord
and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1966.
4. President George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy of
2006 was right on the mark to make the same point.
5. There are numerous Chinese studies about the difference
between Chinese and Western thinking and the inability of the
63