Amy King speaks with Yuen Foong Khong and Iain Henry on US-China rivalry
Speaker: Professor Khong Yuen Foong, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
On 3 May 2023, Amy King joined Iain Henry (Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU) as discussants for an SDSC Research Seminar led by Yuen Foong Khong (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore). Seeking to get to the heart of what the US-China rivalry is all about, Khong argued that the International Relations literature had tended to conflate or misapply Power Transition and Security Dilemma frameworks in their analyses of US-China relations. King welcomed Khong’s contribution in more precisely specifying the “observable implications” of the Power Transition and Security Dilemma frameworks, but suggested that neither framework was especially convincing in capturing US-China dynamics since the end of the Cold War. Instead, King suggested that English School conceptions of ‘great power management,’ and wider notions of order transition, would better account for some of the observable implications Khong pointed to, such as US and Chinese satisfaction with hierarchy, and the agency of individual US and Chinese leaders.
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