Research | Raymond Wang

Dissertation Book Project

Cautious Opportunists: How Rising Powers Shape International Order

How do rising powers shape international order? In my book project, I argue that rising powers neither seek to replace the existing order, nor are they content with following the rules to pursue change from within. Instead, rising powers are cautious opportunists - China shapes international order by commandeering the very rules the US helped create. Because of relative gain concerns, rising powers are cautious, and pursue change in a way that minimizes the costs of change and maximizes friction for incumbent pushback. Commandeering the existing rules—as opposed to overturning them or building alternative institutions—is one way of doing so. For instance, China can obstruct change to keep outdated rules ‘on the books’ and shape the distributional effects of the order. It can also coopt imprecise rules by manipulating their scope, repurposing them in ways that contravene their original purpose. In some cases, China carves out exceptions for itself while applying the rules to others, deflecting hypocrisy costs through deception. China will only build alternative institutions opportunistically – during windows when the incumbent is temporarily unable to push back.

I develop a theory of strategy choice and test this argument through case studies in international trade, development finance, arms control, and maritime issues. I employ a variety of methodological tools, including elite interviews, research at institutional and national archives, and web scraping. I have conducted over 60 interviews to date, ranging from the leadership and frontline staff of international economic institutions to former naval personnel involved in South China Sea issues.

This project makes three contributions to research on power transitions and institutional change. First, the project flips a prevailing institutionalist argument on its head and shows how the tools created by those in power can be appropriated by challengers. Across the cases, I show that mechanisms previously thought to favor the incumbent—such as how rules are hard to change once they are in place—can also benefit the rising power. Second, the project underscores a tradeoff in the design of international order – ambiguity that enables cooperation today makes rules easier to hijack later on. This is particularly relevant today as the US considers creating new institutions to compete with China. Finally, the project calls for a conceptual shift: instead of asking whether China is playing by the rules, we should ask what it is doing to the rules. This shift provides a new approach to managing U.S.-China competition.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Raymond Wang. "Guns and butter: Measuring spillover and implications for technological competition." Journal of Strategic Studies (January 5, 2025): https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2024.2445001.

Abstract: Technological spillover – the transfer and use of knowledge between defence and civilian sectors – is desired by many countries, and particularly salient under intensifying US-China competition. Yet to date, no systematic measure of spillover exists. This paper presents a novel measure of spillover using a dataset of over 116,000 defence-related patents, and argues that (1) concerns over China’s ‘authoritarian advantage’ should be moderated, and (2) the composition and structure of knowledge transfer networks in the US and China should inform the appropriate channels of managing competition, which I demonstrate through case studies of aerial drones and missile technology spillover networks.

Atkins, Eleanor, M Taylor Fravel, Raymond Wang, Nick Ackert, and Sihao Huang. “Two Paths: Why States Join or Avoid China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Global Studies Quarterly 3, no. 3 (July 1, 2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksad049.

Abstract: Although China’s motives for developing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been well studied, scholars have yet to examine systematically why states seek to join the initiative. This paper fills this gap by examining how and why states join China’s BRI. Countries formally join the BRI by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China on cooperation under the BRI framework. These MOUs create few or no obligations for the states who choose to sign them. Thus, most states should join the BRI unless they view the costs of participation as higher. Democracies should be less likely to join because they view joining a Chinese-led initiative as more costly than non-democracies. Our statistical analysis using a new dataset of BRI MOUs and paired case studies provide empirical support for this argument.

Working Papers

"The Economic Effects of Joining China's Belt and Road Initative: Implications for Assessing Chinese Influence," with Taylor Fravel, Nicholas Ackert, Eleanor Freund, and John Minnich (Under review)

Abstract: Scholarship and public commentary on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) often asserts that the Initiative will increase China’s political influence through increased economic interaction. We offer the first comprehensive cross-national analysis of the economic effects of joining the BRI on participating states and use it to test the most likely channels of increased Chinese influence. We find that the economic benefits of joining the BRI are unexpectedly uneven and often short-lived, with construction contracts displaying the greatest increase. Moreover, qualitative case studies of states that receive the greatest increases in construction contracts after joining the BRI demonstrate that these states tend to be closely aligned with China prior to joining. Our findings suggest that caution is warranted in attributing greater influence to China through the BRI.