The chapters thus far discuss the three phases or eras of the relationship between China and the world, defined by different types of connectivity, thin, sharp, and thick. These different types of connectivity are further measured by the three structural realities, that is, presence, population, and production. The third phase, which is marked by thick connectivity, and which is the focus of Chapter 3, witnesses a soft return of China to centrality, with both opportunities and challenges. In addition, the three phases provide us with a major historical trajectory of China’s relationship with the outside world, from centrality to de-centrality to re-centrality.
From all the chapters, the most important insight is that the world is a multinodal web of asymmetric relationships. China’s re-centrality, with both opportunities and challengers, will not create a bipolar hegemon-challenger model; rather, a pattern is emerging in which the negotiated management of disparities creates a multinodal network. In particular, I quote, “States are aligned by partnerships rather than by alliances because their task of securing a variety of international prospects becomes more pressing than that of defending against a specific enemy.”
I have a couple of comments, which will be around an idea I have had in mind for quite some time, that is, a world without a center or centers. The world will not center around the United States; East Asia will not center around China; and there will be no clear centers like what we used to see and perhaps are used to thinking. There are definitely larger states with more military might, economic strength, and demographic advantage, but no state will be able to be centered around. It is exactly the multinodal web of relationships that make any fixed and dominant entity as a power center impossible. Let me paraphrase the above-quoted statement, “States are aligned by partnerships rather than by alliances because their task of securing a variety of international prospects becomes more pressing than that of centering around a specific power.”
The overall trend is, therefore, a deep decentralization from a more fixed power hierarchy to a more fluid relational process. The world will be more like the city of Los Angeles, spreading with all relationships connecting different parts and partners, than that of New York, with the Fifth Avenue and the Rockefeller Center as the hallmarks and the center of the city.
Let me make several points to describe this multinodal and deeply decentered world.
First, Multinodality as the Base for World Order
A multinodal web of asymmetric relationships is a distinct feature of the world order. It reflects the decline of hegemony and an ongoing process of deep power decentralization. The twentieth century is said to be the American century, meaning that the world order is an American-led hegemonic order. But the relative decline of American hegemony is clear. The United States, still the single, most powerful state in the world, is no longer able to provide the necessary public goods alone and the world seems not to support a hegemonic order, whether it is benign or malign. The COVID-19 pandemic is a clear indicator. I think the concept of multinodality agrees with this development.
As American hegemony is in decline, and at the same time, China has become the second largest economy in the world, and especially the competition between the two countries has become quite obvious, arguments have emerged that there will be a bipolar system, together with a new cold war. In other words, there will be a world of structural power struggle for hegemony, plus ideological confrontation, so as to make two power centers possible. I don’t think this is and will be true, for no single state can be a new hegemon and no member of international society will be willing to accept a hegemonic order. A multinodal world is a much better description of the world now and ahead.
But this multinodal world reflects a deep decentralization of power, refusing to accept any hegemony as the legitimate world order. China, the United States, Russia, Germany, India, and others are major powers, in terms of size, population, territory, and other power elements, but they are no longer able to be a fixed center with others below and around. Since all are entangled in the web of relationships, small nodes may play a leading role, as ASEAN nations have shown in the regional processes. The connectivity in a multinodal world is thick, but it is not unidimensional. A multinodal web of complex relationships, plus a multi-dimensional process of relational entanglement, makes deep decentralization possible.
The multiple nodes are live agents, active parts of and in the relational web. The world cannot go back to the old rigid, power-centered structure, and cannot go back to any form of hegemony. It is going to have more active nodes, but without a fixed center.
Second, Global Governance
Global governance is flattening. A hegemonic order makes a vertical governance model possible. It is the American institutional imperium. Pillared by American material and ideational power, institutions are established at the global level to govern the world. The League of Nations and the United Nations are both examples whose designers had in mind this vertical governance model. Rules, norms, and ways of behavior are more or less made by the system-level institutions, sustained by American material power, imbued with liberal ideas, and spreading all the way down to actors in the international system. It is also a governance model in which the hegemonic power is reluctant to encourage multilateral governance at other levels, such as the regional or mini-lateral.
A multinodal web of relationships becomes the outstanding feature of the world as the hegemonic order is declining. Governance in a multinodal system flattens, and actors at all levels are more active agents. Multiple actors including states and non-state actors, multiple levels including regions and individuals, and multiple areas such as climate change and public health, all enrich the multinodal network, defined by various kinds of relationships.
A multinodal world is almost always porous, each penetrating and cutting into others, actors, areas, and levels alike. But first of all, the traditional power centers become porous. There is no clear center that is axipetal, and any nodal actor is in a superposition of being centripetal and centrifugal, of being a leader and a follower. For example, ASEAN reflects very much a module of governance without hegemon or without a center, and it centers around no single major power. To some extent, the European Union is also governance without hegemon, though in a different way.
Third, China and Pacific Asia
China has grown fast. As Professor Womack has said, its presence is clear, within and without the Pacific Asian region. Its connectivity is thick, both within and without the region. Then we may ask a question: Is the region re-centering around China?
My answer is negative. Professor Womack has discussed in more detail the challenges China faces, the various relationships it has to deal with, and the perceptions and misperceptions brought about by the asymmetric relationships. These challenges are real and serious indeed despite the rapid growth and the obviously increased material capabilities on the side of China.
Moreover, as I have argued, no fixed power centers dominate on the relational web. It is not the most powerful single entity that dominates while others center around it; power and agency are always distributed.
Pacific Asia does not and will not center around China, just as the world is and will not center around the United States, for no fixed power center will dominate in a processual web of relationships. The traditional concept of “power center” no longer describes today’s reality of the world as well as the Pacific Asia region. A web is something that provides any node on it with alternatives to turn to, with distributed agency to initiate, and with ability to connect across various webs of relationships. Taking any substantial entity as a power center does not describe the working of relational webs.
We may take a look at the region of Pacific Asia. Almost during the whole process of China’s rise, ASEAN has taken the driving seat in the regional development. To some extent, in the regional web, ASEAN centrality is maintained and accepted by almost all countries concerned. China, Japan, and South Korea accepted the central role of ASEAN though any of them singly is more powerful than ASEAN nations. Later, when other major powers, including Australia, New Zealand, the United States, India, and Russia joined the Pacific Asian regional process, they also made it clear that they recognize and support ASEAN’s centrality. In reality, ASEAN has mostly played a central role in regional cooperation through its open, inclusive, and process-oriented regionalism rather than through its power in the traditional sense.
However, ASEAN itself is more a process than an entity. Its activities are very often termed “process” by ASEAN itself. In some way, ASEAN reflects more the quality of a wave-particle duality rather than a traditional entity as a power center. ASEAN centrality is not out there because it is most powerful in the region. Rather, as a process it has been always engaged in negotiating, adjusting, coordinating, and making concessions, within and without. Within the 10+6 mechanism, any of the six is more materially powerful than any ASEAN nation, and even than ASEAN as a whole, but the centrality is with ASEAN. It is a fluid, dynamic, and processual centrality rather than the most powerful entity in the region.
Thus, when we see the world as a web of relations, we may need to reconsider the concept of power and rethink about the concept of power centers. We may need to reflect on a situation where power centers are constantly moving in a dynamic process on the global multinodal web of relationships.
Conclusion
How do we understand the nodes in a multinodal world? Do we believe that those nodes that have more hard and soft power are centers of the multinodal, complex web, and other non-center nodes are moving around them? It is perhaps an easier way to understand the world and world politics. After all, we are used to it.
However, if we do not take the nodes on the web as entities as network theory usually does and if we do not take the connections between them as non-substantial backgrounds and as external to such nodes for the mere purpose of connecting them, then these nodes themselves are no longer mere entities. Rather they are simultaneously nodes and relations, enfolding and unfolding themselves in a wholeness of time and space, or the wholeness of world politics as a process. This duality and perhaps superposition of the “nodes” should overwhelm any fixed understanding of “power center,” as traditional international relations theory has always done and as our common sense informs us as true.
