While Pacific Asia had China as a “solid center,” a place in the middle where most of the people and production was, the West had a “liquid center,” the Mediterranean. Wealth could be pursued and neighbors conquered in different places in the West, leading to competitive, distinct empires rather than to dynastic cycles.

The chapter introduces the central arguments and main findings of the book.

European imperialism in Pacific Asia not only displaced China as the center of its neighbors’ attention but it splintered the region as well. This was sharp connectivity. France established French Indochina, the Dutch tightened their control of Indonesia, the British took over Malaya and Burma, and all of them had pieces of a disintegrating China. Japan avoided colonization and created its own empire, beginning with Korea and Taiwan. China became the vulnerable edge of a global frame, a frame centered on Europe that included the pieces of Pacific Asia. China’s population was now seen as an impediment to modernization, and its artisanal production was swamped by Western mass production. The US replaced European segmented globalization with a hub-and-spoke globalism rimmed by newly sovereign states. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China remained a mostly insignificant other to its neighbors until Deng Xiaoping’s policies took hold. The salience of China’s presence, population, and production began to rise, and China had become a significant other to its region by 1998. But the US remained the center of an unquestioned global order until the financial crisis of 2008.

Chapter 8 reviews the main arguments of the book, with a discussion about how they can be applied to the new political environment in the Xi era and beyond. The chapter shows that the frequency of atomized protests did not necessarily decline in the Xi era, but its nature changed substantially. The number of interest-based protests declined dramatically, and this could be related to the Xi regimes tighter control over civil society actors such as journalists and labor NGOs. Based on two prominent cases of government crackdown on labor NGOs, the chapter demonstrates that atomized incorporation inevitably requires the regimes continued efforts to monitor and punish defectors. The chapter discusses long-term implications of atomized incorporation by looking at subtle forms of noncooperation.

The United States and China are the primary nodes of the multinodal world order. Together they are the middle third of the global economy, with the world’s biggest military budgets. Their parity makes rivalry inevitable because they are one another’s greatest counterpart. But their parity is asymmetric. China’s power relies on its demographic scale and on its Pacific Asian integration, while the US remains the center of the familiar global system that it created and it is the avatar of the developed world. While a Cold War is unlikely, the dangers posed by global rivalry are profound, ranging from nuclear war to failure to cooperate on global problems. The primary nodes also face asymmetric challenges. The US faces the challenge of adjusting to a central but not hegemonic global role. China faces the challenge of domestic tolerance and a mutually beneficial integration of Greater China and, more generally, of Pacific Asia. Beyond the primary nodes, regional reduction of uncertainties can contribute to the stabilization of world order. Cooperation founded on mutual respect is the prerequisite of successful global governance in a post-hegemonic world.

This chapter describes the socioeconomic changes in the post-reform era that have contributed to growing labor assertiveness. It contends that the regime’s coercive control of migrant labor in the 1980s and 1990s created the structural conditions for labor assertiveness. As in other authoritarian regimes that faced a similar situation at the critical juncture, such as Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea, China also began to deal with unstable state–labor relations as the era of rapid economic growth comes to an end.

Since 2008 Pacific Asia has been reconfigured as a region, with China as its center. In economics, China has been the central driver and partner in growth. In politics, China has become the central concern of its neighbors. China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s in 2000, and by 2009 it equaled the combined totals of Japan, ASEAN, and Korea. While this shows China’s demographic power, it is not simply a matter of size. Its per capita GDP is now at eye level with countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. China is again the major presence in Pacific Asia, with a majority of its population and its production. Re-centered China is quite different from premodern China. China and its region are now globally integrated, and its former, cautious thin connectivity has been replaced by assertive thick connectivity. China now tries to maximize win-win contact. However, the new asymmetries worry the neighbors. China’s challenges of integrating Greater China and avoiding hostility with Japan are vital for China’s global prospects as well as its regional stature.