Political Attitudes of China’s and the U.S.’s Future Elites toward Governance and Their Implications for Southeast Asia

Abstract—Will Southeast Asia become a politically safer place in the future? Can we hope for the U.S., the world’s largest power, and China, the world’s most prominent rising power to achieve these goals? If a regional power is clean and is able to control corruption, we may assume that it is responsible, and therefore expect the region to be safer. With the 21st century commonly referred to as the “Asian century” how will South East Asia prepare itself to face the challenges of a volatile region? One measure of stability is the movement of regional powers from more autocratic to more democratic. This study selected Asia’s most prominent state, China, the most obvious rising power, as a case study. A method used to dissect China’s good governance topic is by the use of survey questionnaires. A second case analyzed was the United States. American students were surveyed on their perceptions of good governance. The study analyzed the current trend with regards to efficiency, effectiveness, corruption, and clean government. From the analysis, the study aims to predict the direction in which current and future leaders of the world in general, and the U.S. and China in particular, will steer the world and Southeast Asia? Results indicating a conservative Chinese view versus a more liberal U.S. view could pose problems for future China-ASEAN relations.

Index Terms—Southeast Asia, China, United States, governance, survey.

Sugumaran Narayanan is with Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX 76308 USA (e-mail: narasugu@yahoo.com).
Wanfa Zhang is with Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL 32901 USA (e-mail: wzhang@fit.edu).

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Cite: Sugumaran Narayanan and Wanfa Zhang, "Political Attitudes of China’s and the U.S.’s Future Elites toward Governance and Their Implications for Southeast Asia," International Journal of Culture and History vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 6-13, 2017.