The widespread debate on an East Asian power shift is generally based on the crude notion that power and capability are interchangeable. We critique this view and offer the alternative that power is the capacity of actors and discourses to produce effects— what we call relational and productive power, respectively. We also engage in a reflexive exercise by addressing the productive power of the power-shift debate itself, and emphasize the danger that this debate might enable the kind of realpolitik that it forebodes.