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After Soviet Union's fall China and United States lost a dangerous foe in East Asia, and it changed enormously the balance of power in this region, transforming the multipolar distribution of power existing previously into a bipolar. In other words, since 1991 China and United states are the only great powers in East Asia. To improve its relative position in the balance of power, the Chinese government has invested substantially on modernizing its armed forces. The issue of this paper is the influence of the Chinese military modernization on regional balance of power, focusing especially in military inventories e its means of use (asymmetrical tactics of anti-access and area denial), mostly on maritime domain. It drives us to the central question of that research: what is the influence of Chinese military modernization on the distribution of power in East Asia. The method utilized is the case study – structured and focused comparison. The comparative has a synchronic approach, in other words are considered the values of variables in only one moment. One concludes that China's military modernization has changed substantially the balance of power in East Asia, favoring the Chinese position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite emergent trends of geo-economic integration between nation-states, the role of realist-driven geopolitical calculation appears highly enduring. This paper explores the potential contradictions between state-centric geopolitical concerns and transnational geo-economic formation through an exploration of China-US tensions over Taiwan, a territory of indeterminate geo-legal status and which China regards as its own province. I consider how the Taiwan Relations Act, a domestic public law of the US that frames US-Taiwan relations and has a major influence on East Asian geopolitics, could contradict emergent 'China region', and possibly even China-US, geo-economic integration. This is because the US-sustained arms sales to Taiwan rest on imagining and containing China as a 'threat', while geo-economic integration entails enrolling China as a strategic partner, if not an ally. Consequently, the Taiwan issue could stifle the enhancement of Sino-American relations at a historical juncture when the Chinese and American economies are more intertwined than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]