litarily. Ultimately, economic domination could lead to military and political domination.
There is one major factor which may induce Chinese leaders to seek dominance in the Asia-Pacific region: cultural nationalism. Cultural nationalism refers to the historical reaction by Asian-Pacific nations against perceived Western imperialism and has its roots in the Western imperial domination of the region during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. While the military and political withdrawal of the West from the region during the latter decades of the Twentieth Century removed the impetus for political nationalism, the continued economic dominance of the West during this period has given a boost to cultural nationalism (Gill and Henley, 1996, pp. 8-9).
Cultural nationalism has also been given a boost by recent U.S. efforts at tying human rights reforms to economic developments. Asians view Western efforts to "convert" Asia over to accepting the primacy of the individual as a call to reject the traditional Asian philosophy calls for the primacy of the group over the individual. Consequently, Western attempts to impose human rights ideals in Asia are seen as a vestige of the old imperialist system (Leibo, 1997; Shattuck, 1997, pp. 78-79).
The reaction of China to perceived U.S. economic and cultural hegemony in the region could also take the form of spreading nuclear or chemical weapons in the region. This means that the Chinese government could respond to U.S. power by asserting
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