The purpose of this thesis is to examine the extent to which China has stabilized its communist regime and defended or pursued its crucial nationalist interests while maintaining a relatively peaceful environment in East Asia. This research question is relatively new and important because many analysts assumed that only through changing these two identities, can China achieve its peace rise.
By innovatively combining Social Identity Theory’s (SIT) recategorization strategy and its emphasis on the actor’s rational choice, and using the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Strategy as an example of SIT, this thesis deduces principles of what I call as China’s strategic management of identities and interests. By doing so, this thesis also makes several theoretical contributions to the literature. First, this combination is a new approach to analyze the puzzle that contrary to some pessimistic classical, neo-classical and offensive realists’ expectation, China has not faced a hard-balancing coalition in East Asia although it is consolidating communist regime and sovereignty claims. Second, this thesis also makes contribution SIT’s application in international relations (IR) because IR scholars using SIT often underplay the theory’s emphasis on the actor’s rational choice and did not use recategorization to examine how Sino-US competition can be ameliorated.
This thesis argues that by forming shared identities/interests with relevant actors and downplaying conflicting ones, China has to a certain degree maintained a relatively benign environment without seriously destabilizing its communist regime and damaging crucial nationalist interests. However, this strategy also has limitations. First, the shared identities/interests approach often fails because CCP is unwilling to loosening political control or concede important nationalist interests. Second, China’s strategy of pursing crucial interests in a restrained way to downplay conflicting identity may not always keep frictions under control.
