中國的快速崛起是否將對東亞區域安全以及中美關係帶來負面的影響,是當代國際關係研究中最重要的問題之一。當代的三大現實主義外交政策理論—攻勢現實主義、新古典現實主義和守勢現實主義,普遍對於中國的崛起是否會帶來衝突的發生抱持著較為悲觀的看法,但是對於這個衝突到底是如何產生的因果機制,卻有著不同的預測。本文考察在歷史上極為接近現實主義「無政府狀態」假定的東周時代所發生的兩場大戰—春秋末年的「齊吳之戰」與戰國末年的「秦滅六國之戰」,並且發現,在一個非常接近現實主義「無政府狀態」假定的環境之下,各國的「擴張理由」和「聯盟政策」,最符合「新古典現實主義」的預測。本文的發現對於以現實主義的外交政策理論來理解中國崛起對國際衝突的影響具有重要的啟示意義。
How the rise of China may affect regional security in East Asia and the Sino-U.S. relationship is one of the most important questions in contemporary international relations studies. All the three main contemporary realism foreign policy theories-offensive realism, neoclassical realism, and defensive realism-hold pessimistic attitudes towards the impact of China's rise, but differ in the mechanisms they infer to explain how China's rise will lead to international conflict. In this article, I investigate two systemic wars that occurred in the Spring and Autumn Period (the war between Qi and Wu) and the Warring States Period (the war between Qin and the other six warring states) with historical backgrounds that are similar to the realism's "anarchy" assumption when compared with all the other historical periods in China. I find that it is neoclassical realism, not offensive realism or defensive realism, which has the most explanatory power in a world of ideal-type anarchy. This finding has important theoretical implications when we try to predict the influence of China's rise on international conflict with the applications of realism theories.