Abstract:
The theoretical framework of this thesis is provided by two similar theories, Power Transition Theory and the theory presented in Gilpin’s book, War and Change in World Politics, which are merged together and referred to collectively here as the Theories on Power Transition (TPT). The TPT are frequently applied in scholarship on China’s rise, but despite their prevalence, some scholars consider them to have been made redundant by new developments in the international system. This thesis seeks to resolve this dispute by adapting the theories to the contemporary international order. Responding to the criticisms of the TPT, this thesis derives a new factor that affects the nature of a power transition, which was not previously identified by these theories: the rising state’s redistribution of the benefits of the international order towards itself. The existence of this new factor, which is termed self-redistribution, is tested in the empirical body by analysing the extent to which China has changed areas of the global financial order to increase its satisfaction. China’s self-redistribution is assessed in the Bretton Woods financial institutions and in its creation of new financial institutions outside of the US-led Western order. This thesis finds that China has been able to make moderate changes to the specific rules and norms of the international order with which it is dissatisfied by working within the existing major international financial institutions (IFIs). Despite these changes, China remains unsatisfied, as the governance systems in these major IFIs have prevented a timely adjustment of the governance powers of China and other emerging and developing countries to match their underlying economic capabilities. China’s leadership role in Asian financial regionalism provides it with the capacity to further self-redistribute, although this capacity has mostly remained latent, partly because of constraints on the resources and priorities of both China and other emerging countries. These results suggest that self-redistribution is a factor in whether a power transition will lead to war, but that the relationship between increasing power capabilities and redistributing the benefits of the order is weak when the power gap between a rising and dominant state is still large.