Delighted to provide blurb for “The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition”!

Blurbs

“Leading international relations scholars Brian Fong and Ja Ian Chong have edited a scholarly tour de force surveying one of the most important, enduring academic and policy issues. They and their well-chosen contributors elucidate today’s latest resurgence of great power competition around the world and in frontier domains. Read now, keep ready for reference!”

— Andrew S. Erickson, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, USA

“This thoughtfully compiled edited volume offers a thorough and eclectic analysis of the theory and praxis of US-China great power competition. The volume offers a thought-provoking overview of one of the central issues of international politics, and will be of use to scholars and practitioners alike.”

— Courtney J. Fung, Macquarie University, Australia

“An essential compendium of the diverse ways great power competition can unfold and how can we make sense of its various dimensions. This contribution could not be more timely.”

— T. H. Hall, Director, University of Oxford China Centre, University of Oxford, UK

“Once seen as a field in decline, the study of Great Power Competition is back on the agenda of IR and security studies. This well-crafted Handbook re-appraises, updates, and advances the thinking on the subject in two ways. One, it offers a clear conceptual framework to study Great Power competition that accounts for the various actors, mechanisms, and domains where a new era of post-Cold War struggles for Great Power influence have been unfolding. Two, it offers an avowedly global account of the resurgence of this competition through a set of well-researched and intriguing cases. Written in a clear and effective style, the Handbook will be a helpful starting point for students and a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners.”

— Deepak Nair, Australian National University, Australia

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Brian C. H. Fong is Full Professor in the College of Social Sciences at the National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.

Dr. Fong is a political scientist originating from Hong Kong. He is currently a Professor and Associate Dean of College of Social Sciences at National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan) (2022-). He also holds adjunct positions at SOAS University of London in the United Kingdom and University of the Ryukyus in Japan.

Before joining National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan), Brian C. H. Fong was Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong (2013-2022), Lecturer in the Division of Social Sciences of the City University of Hong Kong (2008-2013) and Executive Officer of the Hong Kong Government (2001-2007).

Professor Fong’s research focuses on Great Power Politics, Global Democracy, and Identity Politics, producing more than 90 journal articles, book chapters, and authored books, etc. He is the author of US-China Rivalry: Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and the lead editor of The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition (Routledge, 2024).

Ja Ian Chong?is Associate Professor in Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

The focus of his teaching and research is on international relations, especially IR theory, security, Chinese foreign policy, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific. Of particular interest to him are issues that stand at the nexus of international and domestic politics, such as influences on nationalism and the consequences of major power competition on the domestic politics of third countries. He also enjoys looking at historical material in his research. In addition to his academic background, he has experience working in think-tanks both in Singapore and in the United States. As such, he also looks at the relationship between political science theory and policy, and believes the two can inform each other.

He is author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation–China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge, 2012), which received the 2013 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

ABOUT THE VOLUME

Brian C. H. Fong and Ja Ian Chong, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition (New York: Routledge, 2o24).

The Routledge Handbook of Great Power Competition is a comprehensive, pioneering, and interdisciplinary guide of this re-emerging field.

Offering a team of cutting-edge researchers in the field, it advances an analytical framework of great power competition. It surveys the major theories (mainstream and critical), actors (state, quasi-state, and non-state), mechanisms (military, economic, and ideational influence), and domains (territorial and non-territorial) pertaining to contemporary great power competition.

This Handbook is an essential text for scholars and students of international relations, security studies, global governance, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to global policy makers and practitioners who need to observe contemporary great power competition.

We are now living in a world of renewed great power competition (see Mead, 2014; Brands, 2017; Wright, 2017; Colby and Mitchell, 2020; Lynch III, 2021). Since the turn of the 2010s, the relatively stable period of the post-Cold War years has been replaced by a new era of great power competition. When world politics changes, great power competition correspondingly re-emerges as a contentious topic for scholarly research. This chapter endeavours to make a modest contribution to this (re-)emerging field by advancing an analytical framework that integrates recent studies and stimulates future research. The rest of this chapter will be organised as follows. It begins with a discussion of the reemergence of great power competition studies, followed by a conceptualisation of the notion of great power competition. The main body of the chapter will advance an analytical framework, outlining a general list of actors, mechanisms, and domains pertaining to contemporary great power competition studies, using an integrative literature review approach. The last section concludes the chapter by discussing future research directions.