Rebranding China
Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order
Published by: Stanford University Press
Series: Studies in Asian Security
176 pages, 152.00 x 229.00 mm
by Xiaoyu Pu
Published by: Stanford University Press
Series: Studies in Asian Security
176 pages, 152.00 x 229.00 mm
China is intensely conscious of its status, both at home and abroad. This concern is often interpreted as an undivided desire for higher standing as a global leader. Yet, Chinese political elites heatedly debate the nation's role as it becomes an increasingly important player in international affairs. At times, China positions itself not as a nascent global power but as a fragile developing country. Contradictory posturing makes decoding China's foreign policy a challenge, generating anxiety and uncertainty in many parts of the world. Using the metaphor of rebranding to understand China's varying displays of status, Xiaoyu Pu analyzes a rising China's challenges and dilemmas on the global stage.
As competing pressures mount across domestic, regional, and international audiences, China must pivot between different representational tactics. Rebranding China demystifies how the state represents its global position by analyzing recent military transformations, regional diplomacy, and international financial negotiations. Drawing on a sweeping body of research, including original Chinese sources and interdisciplinary ideas from sociology, psychology, and international relations, this book puts forward an innovative framework for interpreting China's foreign policy.
This chapter provides an overview of the research question, key concepts, and research design of the book. China has been sending contradictory signals about its status and role in the twenty-first century, sometimes emphasizing its great power status and other times presenting itself as a fragile developing country. Instead of focusing on China's struggle for more recognition as a great power, the book suggests that China is facing a more complicated challenge of international image projection. China's future challenge will be to manage its conflicting roles and images in ways that advance its national interests while not engendering dangerous misperceptions and expectations among its neighbors and the rest of the global community. This book takes a multimethod approach, including case studies, content analysis, and interviews.
This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of status signaling in international politics. Status signaling is the use of a particular subset of signals to convey the information that a state is asserting a particular standing in international society. In a general sense, status signaling is the mechanism of information transmission that aims to change or maintain a special type of status belief among relevant political actors. Each audience is different, so an emerging power sends different status signals. There are various means through which the national leaders can signal the preferred status of their nation. This chapter identifies strategies and tactics of status signaling: conspicuous consumption, conspicuous giving, and strategic spinning.
This chapter describes China's multiple identities and audiences in detail. China's identities include that of socialist country, developing country, both emerging and established great power, and quasi superpower, and its audiences include the domestic, regional, global South, and Western domains. While China certainly intends to build a positive image, the country has multiple incentives to project different images. This chapter illuminates the various motivations of China's signaling behaviors.
This chapter opens with a conceptual analysis of how China signals a higher status through conspicuous consumption in international relations. It then turns to the importance of domestic audience and nationalism. The chapter discusses China's aircraft carrier project and 2015 military parade, examining the underlying motivations and comparing the status signaling argument with competing approaches.
This chapter analyzes China's competing images in regional diplomacy. China signaled a higher status as a regional leader through conspicuous giving in the Asian financial crisis, and China has strengthened its charm offensive strategy in recent years. However, China has also tried to defend its maritime claims through selective coercion. The two faces of China's regional diplomacy pose a challenge to regional order.
This chapter analyzes China's strategic spinning during the global financial crisis. Facing two types of global audiences (the global South and the West), China sometimes highlights its profile as an emerging great power and other times downplays its profile by emphasizing its developing country status. A developing country status serves multiple purposes for China. Targeting the West, signaling a developing country status sends a reassuring message, and it allows China to shirk greater international responsibilities. Targeting the global South, signaling a developing country status plays the solidarity card. The tension between China's great power status and its identity of developing country is bound to increase as China seeks a new role in the twenty-first century.
The concluding chapter summarizes the findings and implications for China's foreign policy, status politics, and signaling in international relations more broadly. Applying the analytical framework of status signaling, the chapter also provides a preliminary analysis of Xi Jinping's foreign policy in a new era.
Xiaoyu Pu is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is also a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
"Xiaoyu Pu offers a thoughtful analysis of China's competing status-signaling behavior while at the same time advancing the study of status to new and exciting territories." ~T. V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations, McGill University
"In Rebranding China, Xiaoyu Pu offers an innovative and insightful analysis of the various and often contradictory ways that a rising China portrays itself on the international stage. This is a must read for anyone interested in China's foreign relations and China's domestic political development in the reform era." ~Thomas J. Christensen, Columbia University
"Xiaoyu Pu has written an original, insightful and creative book. Rebranding China elegantly explains China's otherwise contradictory images of itself as both a greatpower and a developing state." ~M. Taylor Fravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"In this short and well-written monograph, Pu contributes many novel insights to both China studies and status politics studies....a must-read for anyone interested in China's foreign policy, status politics and international hierarchy." ~Biao Zhang, International Affairs
"In this excellent, pathbreaking piece of scholarship, Pu...pushes us to consider non-material motives for state action and view signaling as more than just a means of communicating intentions and resolve....[This] is an impressive piece of scholarship, one which contributes simultaneously to theoretical work on signaling and status as well empirically to our understanding of the sources of PRC behavior on the international stage." ~Todd H. Hall, Journal of Chinese Political Science
"Rebranding China sets out to debunk the notion that the rising China is desperately—even recklessly—committed to improving its status in the world. The book's greatest success is to remind readers of an important point that is sometimes overlooked: rising powers have complex incentives, some of which point toward reassuring or even system-strengthening behavior." ~Steven Ward, Cambridge Review of International Affairs
"Xiaoyu Pu's timely and important book on China's use of 'status signaling' is a welcome contribution. He argues that the origins, manifestations, and implications of 'status signaling' need to be examined to better understand China's external behavior.Pu's willingness to look inside the 'gray box' of Chinese foreign policy motivations and processes will stand up well over time." ~Evan S. Mederio, Political Science Quarterly
"Rebranding China is an engaging work that not only pushes the boundaries of theoretical knowledge on status in international politics; it is also an original development of a budding research area—the so-called logic of positionality—that deserves greater attention in IR. In relation to scholarship on China's foreign policy, the book's discussion of the developing country role is a welcome addition to current conversations that tend to harp on China's rising status." ~Hoo Tiang Boon, Perspectives on Politics
"Pu presents us with a nuanced picture about Beijing's attempts to propagate and reconcile its multifaceted images to different audiences....[He] makes important contributions to several research topics that engage international relations scholars." ~Steve Chan, H-Diplo
"Pu's timely book provides a much-needed new perspective on China's rise, reminding us of the inadvisability of seeing China as a unitary state actor with a fixed strategic plan to take over the world. Rebranding China both advances and shows the fruitfulness of the line of inquiry on China and status." ~Yong Deng, H-Diplo
"[Rebranding China] makes a number of important contributions and should help to inspire future research on status signaling in China and elsewhere." ~Scott L. Kastner, H-Diplo
"Xiaoyu Pu has given us an excellent analysis of China's contemporary foreign policy behavior....his book will be important in both theory-building and foreign policy analysis." ~Gregory J. Moore,H-Diplo
"Rebranding China offers an original and compelling explanation for the extraordinary difficulty scholars and policymakers have had in attempting to infer China's intentions...essential reading." ~Brandon K. Yoder, H-Diplo
"Rebranding China bridges the literature on status and signaling while providing much-needed insight into Chinese foreign policy decision-making. It is a must-read that will generate even more exciting work in studies of rising power behavior." ~Ketian Zhang, H-Diplo
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