Whither East Asia And Whither China

This thesis is to study the general attitudes of American officials and scholarstoward the ongoing East Asian integration and community building as well as a risingChina. It adopts a methodology of textual analysis, i.e., a careful examination ofarticles, either speeches by U.S. officials or essays by American mainstream scholarspublished in the journal of Foreign Affairs from 2001 to 2005.Americans' attitudes toward East Asia are important, in that the United States, asthe sole remaining superpower in the world, is attaching an exceptional importance tothe East Asian region and is watching closely every move of East Asian countries.The East Asian integration, as a major event affecting all members of the region, iscertainly attracting attention from the United States. The U.S. fears that its traditionalposition and leading role in this region will be affected with the emergence of a unitedEast Asia and a rising China. Thus high-ranking U.S. governmental officialsconstantly express their concerns in speeches while American scholars also putforward their opinions and suggestions in essays.In this thesis, I select five speeches by American officials and seven essays byscholars representatively to study the general policy orientations of the United Statestoward the East Asian integration and a rising China. Through classification andanalysis of their articles, I find that officials' attitudes toward the East Asianintegration are cautiously negative ones, i.e., they do not welcome the integrationprocess, though there are slight changes in their attitudes now and then;while scholarsare cautiously positive about the integration. As for a rising China, it can be said thatboth officials and scholars are cautiously positive about the rise of China and bothembrace a positive U.S. relationship with China, in spite of some serious U.S.concerns. This is just the so-called policy of hedged engagement.