Yuhui's Blog Post :China’s Economic Power Unsettles the Neighbors

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/world/asia/10jakarta.html?_r=1
This article is primarily concerned with China’s swift economic growth and its impact on its neighbors. Many Asia countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, have to compete with an ever-growing Chinese economy, which is not easy.
This article reminds me of the arguments about semi-peripheral countries in the Wallerstein’s World Theory. Semi-peripheral countries have to be very cautious in terms of economic development to accelerate their development and become a core country; otherwise, they will one day find themselves peripheral countries, like Jamaica. Generally speaking, there fierce competition between semi-peripheral countries because they all desire becoming cores. The ever-growing tensions between China and other developing countries in Asia adequately demonstrate this perspective. Countries, like Vietnam and Indonesia, all strive to become cores and have to compete with an ever-growing China. Thus, there are tensions between these countries.
Constructivism does not work very well here. It cannot be applied to account for the tensions between these Asia countries.I will take the relationship between China and Vietnam as an example. China and Vietnam have very similar culture traditions and they got along pretty good in history. Before the PRC was founded, there were some trade between China and Vietnam. It might be argued that it was because of the Vietnam War that demolished the two countries relationship by Constructivism. But I think it was not very appropriate to argue this way because it is hard for constructivism give a reason for which accounts for China's decision on the Vietnam War in the first place.The problem with Constructivism is that it prioritizes political reasons over economic factors and it does not take economic relationship between countries into account. Thus it is cannot give a good explanation for the tensions between China and Vietnam.