How a Rising Power Treats Small States amid Power Transition: Evidence from the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

This article examines how a rising great power formulates policies toward smaller states during a power transition, using the historical case of the Turkic/Eastern Turkic Khanate and Sui-Tang China to test competing power-based and culture-based hypotheses. The findings support the power-based explanation, showing that Sui-Tang China’s strategic tendencies and overall approaches toward small states closely followed shifts in the material power balance with the hegemon, adopting defensive and moderate policies when weaker and offensive and harsher policies when stronger. Conversely, cultural affinity between China and smaller states had negligible influence on policy variations, leading to the rejection of the cultural affinity hypothesis. The study challenges notions of Chinese exceptionalism by linking great-power relations to asymmetric interactions with smaller states and suggests that, prior to overtaking the USA, China is likely to maintain a defensive posture toward the USA and moderate policies toward lesser nations.