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The “ASEAN Way” is based on the principle of consensus; any individual member state effectively has a veto over any proposal it does not support. This book analyzes how China uses its financial power and influence to divide the member countries of ASEAN in order to prevent them from acting collectively to resolve their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Comparative case studies of China’s relations with Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar illustrate that the regime type in the country with which China is interacting plays an important role in enhancing or constraining China’s ability to influence the governments of developing states within ASEAN and globally. Authoritarian institutions facilitate Chinese influence while democratic institutions inhibit that influence. The book argues that as long as ASEAN includes developing, authoritarian regimes, and given that the United States and other global powers are unlikely to risk any serious conflict over each push of China’s maritime boundaries, little by little, China will assert its sovereignty over the South China Sea. Nevertheless, the book contends that if China chooses to engage in more sophisticated bilateral politics with democratic states, such as providing incentives to a broader range of interest groups, then China will have more success in projecting its power globally.

The power of feminist critiques and the quest for non-Western international relations share one epistemological caveat in practice. Namely, there is a tendency toward resistance that usually invokes binary thinking, informed by strategic essentialism. Consequently, femininity fails to deconstruct masculinity despite the widespread attention it has attracted. Rather, it is involved in a battle that ironically privileges masculinity. Using the concept of “self-feminizing”—the adoption of a feminine identity to oblige and achieve mutual caring as a relational strategy—Eros of International Relations argues that postcolonial actors have employed gendered identities in order to survive the squeezing pressure of globalization and nationalism in their own way. The book illustrates the feminist potential for emancipation through offering a range of empirical examples, showing that women with various Chinese characteristics, acting on behalf of their nation, city and corporation, reject the masculinization of their group of belonging as a remedy for inferiority or threat. Where implemented effectively, actors who self-feminize have the potential to deconstruct the binaries of masculine competition and seek alternative strategies under the postcolonial global order. This book inspires revisionist and yet friendly reflections on the current studies of postcolonialism, international relations, relational theory, China studies, cultural studies, and feminism.

In Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States and in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958, this book argues that the Taiwan Strait Crises could be understood as an evolution towards tacit accommodation. Exploiting new materials from mainland China, Taiwan and the United States, a reevaluation of the international relations of all three parties via a simultaneous presentation of their disparate perspectives is made. At the heart of its argument, this book proposes that conflict resolution had become ritualized progressively as the protagonists implicitly constructed a framework of understanding. An uneasy peace was thus a product of a ritualization of discourses and maneuvers, embodied in verbal signaling and symbolic gestures. These exacting understandings laid the groundwork for a substantive change in the nature of Sino-American relations - from hostile nuclear confrontation in 1954 to tacit accommodation in 1958. In particular, this book highlights relevant aspects of “culture” to better understand the intricacies of the Sino-US-ROC relations. This aspect complements existing scholarship on realism, strategy, economics, ideology and domestic aspects of the Taiwan Strait crises. Strait Rituals will show the significance of “ritualization” in explaining the transition of “tacit communication” to “tacit accommodation.” It will demonstrate how both parties engaged in ritualized actions that facilitated the process of conflict resolution. Strait Rituals will establish how the US and China achieved a limited but shared understanding of the modus operandi of the other party through their ritualized actions in terms of their use of public symbols, identity issues, cultural images and official discourses on one hand, and military posturing, diplomatic canvassing for international support, and negotiations on the other hand.