Conflict and Cooperation - the Integration and Balance of Geo-politics and Geo-economics

The deepening of global economic integration challenge the traditional concept of geopolitics, and thus put a profound impact on the inter-State conflict and cooperation situations. Some scholars argue that the traditional geopolitics is based on conflict and confrontation, while the geo-economics is based on cooperation, Therefore, currently we should take the geo-economic thought as theoretical basis while abandon the traditional geopolitical thought to develop peaceful grand strategies. In this paper, the authors’ puts forward that the theoretical foundation of peaceful development grand strategy should not abandon or unilaterally emphasis on geopolitical or geo-economics thought, the theoretical foundation of national peaceful development grand strategy should be the interaction and balance of geopolitics and geoeconomics. This paper includes four parts. The first part is literature survey on the representative theories that emerged in recent years in this field. In the second part, the authors discusses the role of cooperation in geopolitics considering that a state is a rational beings, the national interests is the resources to maintain its life, the state’s ultimate goal of cooperation is to deprive each other's sovereignty, and obtains all living resources of other states with lower cost, and thus to obtain comparative advantage and a head start for repeated games. So cooperation itself is a geopolitical competition means. in the third part, the authors discusses the role of competition in geo-economics and points out that the most basic concept of economics is not advocating that the actors achieve absolute benefit maximization through cooperation, but stresses the scarcity of resources, emphasizes the independence of market players. Economical activities can not achieve the goal of optimal allocation of resources and improving efficiency without competition. So competition is a basic concept of geo-economics that can not be ignored. In the fourth part, the authors discuss how to develop the Chinese peaceful development grand strategy which is based on the integration and balance of geopolitics and geo-economics. The author believes that, politics and cooperation, economics and competition can both be integrated. States should make comprehensive use of political and military power to ensure fair economical cooperation and safeguard national economical interests. At the same time, the state should use the economical resources to strengthen political and military power, and to fulfill Chinese peaceful development grand strategy with the interaction and balance of politics and economics.