| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 戰略暨國家安全碩士在職專班 === 107 === After Xi Jinping took office as the president of the Peoples Republic of China in November 2012, he actively expanded the power by various means like "Auji reef reclamation and land reclamation", promoting the neighboring countries to make concessions or bandwagoning on South China Sea issues by means of military coercion. As opposed to Hu Jintao’s "peaceful rise", China under Xi Jinping’s administration seems to be no longer in the status quo.
In 2017, President Donald Trump published his first National Security Strategy holding that China is a revisionist strong power intending to change the status quo and one of the three major security challenges of the United States. China’s militarization of reefs in the South China Sea has seriously affected the safety of international trade and shipping and jeopardized the national security and core interests of the United States.
Thucydides recorded the war between Athens and Sparta in the "History of the Peloponnesian War" and finally came to a conclusion : The real reason for the inevitableness of war is the growth of the power of Athens that led to the fear of Sparta. Just like the growing Athens, related actions of China in recent years in the South China Sea not only caused dissatisfaction among the surrounding countries causing regional conflicts to intensify but also affected and challenged the long-standing hegemony of the United States in the region. The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether the interaction between China and the United States in the South China Sea is in the framework of the Thucydides trap, with Chinas rise bringing pressure and fear to the United States.
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