Chapter 5 puts the reconfiguration of Pacific Asia into global perspective in four respects. First, in contrast to the divergences that characterized the modern era, in this century there has been a multi-dimensional convergence between developed and developing countries. 2008 marked the first time since the nineteenth century that the production of the developing world was greater than that of the developed world. Second, the unipolar world order of the post-Cold War has shifted to a multinodal world order. Without a defining global power, the multinodal order has a “certainty vacuum” rather than a power vacuum, and it is best filled by partnerships rather than by alliances. Third, Pacific Asia has become a global powerhouse. In 2020 its GDP equaled that of the US and the EU combined, and it is integrated by global value chains. Fourth, China reaches beyond its region. Despite the headwinds of Covid-19, trade bottlenecks, and global tensions, China and Pacific Asia have arrived. If a bipolar configuration develops, it is likely to differ from the Cold War camps by being closer to a developed/developing country split, with less unity of leadership on either side.

Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework with an examination of the regime’s changing approach to labor control. It explains why the Chinese regime has moved away from overt coercion and adopted atomized incorporation and argues that the change could be understood from a political economy perspective. The empirical findings show that the central government and the local governments in developed industrial regions have a new incentive to implement pro-labor policies, even when they undermine the profitability of export-oriented sectors. The chapter contrasts the specific components of the new strategy with the strategies of authoritarian labor control observed in Latin America and East Asia.

Chapter 6 analyzes firm-level patterns of collective action and finds that law-abiding firms are more likely to experience collective action for interest-based demands. Using the strike map dataset of the China Labour Bulletin, it shows that interest-based protests are less likely to invite state repression, in part because they do not target state authorities. Contrary to the assumption that those protest that ask more than the legal minimum might be more politically threatening than law-based protests, the findings in this chapter demonstrate that interest-based protests rarely breach the physical boundary of individual firms.

Given China’s position in Pacific Asia, defining its regional centrality might seem a simple task. But centralities grander than merely geographical have been alleged and contested. Currently some maintain that China is the central kingdom because of its power. But it was conquered by the Mongols and the Manchus, and its present centrality is due more to its economic mass and connectivity than to its military. Others claim that hierarchy is natural to Asian culture, and China is the apex. But neighbors were often cynical about China’s moral stature, and China’s soft power is now at a low ebb. I argue that China was the center of regional attention in the premodern era, and that it has returned to center stage since 2008. The three basic reasons for China’s original centrality and its return were situational: presence, population, and production. The salience of all three disappeared with Western imperialism’s global presence, the devaluation of mere demography, and industrial production. Traditional and current centrality created asymmetric relationships between China and its neighbors, but the regional situations differ fundamentally.

Chapter 4 is an examination of workers’ blame attribution, looking at when workers direct their grievances to the central government vis-`a-vis other actors. It demonstrates that migrant workers’ social grievances about limited upward mobility, income inequality, and unfairness grow as they gain experience as migrants. While atomized protests focus on economic grievances pertaining to a specific job, the empirical analyses of survey data show that social grievances pose a bigger threat to the regime, since they change the direction of blame attribution. Protest participants are less likely to blame the central government than nonparticipants, which could imply that those that blame the central government might not be interested in atomized protests.

Pacific Asia, comprised of Northeast Asia, Greater China, and Southeast Asia, has surpassed the combined production of the United States and Europe, and its intraregional economic cohesiveness exceeds that of either the EU or North America. Pacific Asia has emerged gradually and without major conflict, but it should be taken seriously as a region. China is primarily a regional power, but in a prosperous region deeply interconnected to the rest of the world. The United States tends to view China as a lone global competitor, but its global presence and strength rest on its centrality to Pacific Asia. Understanding China in its region is the first task of this book, followed by the challenge of rethinking the global order in terms of a multinodal matrix rather than a bipolar competition of great powers. This requires background on the evolution of the Pacific Asian configuration, including China’s premodern centrality as well as the splintering of the region by European colonialism. Rethinking is aided by commentaries from four of Asia’s leading thinkers about international relationships.

Chapter 5 is a study of within-firm mobilization during collective action and explains why those with the resources for mobilization have weaker preferences for collective action. Due to high levels of labor turnover, the majority of the workforce lacks strong social ties in the workplace, and those who do have mobilizational resources perceive collective action to be highly costly. Collective action occurs when the workers with mobilizational resources expect a high chance of success.

Wu Yu-Shan, a distinguished Taiwanese political scientist, points out that Western success was based on power, undergirded by technology and organization. In response, Pacific Asia attempted to achieve modernization by four routes. Western liberalism was stillborn in China, as was Meiji-style conservative modernization. Mao’s approach could best be called “confused modernization,” a mix of state socialism and disastrous experiments like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. What worked in Korea and Taiwan was authoritarian politics and state capitalism, and with Deng Xiaoping this became China’s path as well.

Qin Yaqing, China’s foremost theorist of international relations, concentrates on the complexities of the new multinodal world order. He argues against centrality, pointing out that international relationships are now complex and flat rather than binary and hierarchical. The nodes of the international multinodal complex are internally as well as externally complex. Moreover, the successful regional initiatives of ASEAN demonstrate the capacity of smaller nodes to play leading roles in configuring order.

Prior to the Opium War China was central to Pacific Asia, but it was not in control of its neighborhood. The mobility of the various nomadic groups threatened China’s northern and western frontiers, and Vietnam’s successful resistance to Ming annexation set a southern boundary-stone. While China’s centrality was not hegemonic, its location, demographic preponderance, and artisanal production made China the center of regional attention. Conversely, because of China’s demographic and production centrality, China was more interested in defending what it had than in imperial adventures abroad. Its foreign policy was one of controlling exposure in relationships—thin connectivity. By the Ming Dynasty this evolved into the tribute system, whose core was a ritualized exchange of deference by the neighbor for acknowledgement of autonomy by China.