Over the past three decades, China has rapidly emerged as a major regional power, yet East Asia has been more peaceful than at any time since the Opium Wars of 1839-1841. Why has the region accommodated China's rise? David C. Kang believes certain preferences and beliefs are responsible for maintaining stability in East Asia. His research shows that East Asian states have grown closer to China, with little evidence that the region is rupturing. These states see China's rise as advantageous and are willing to defer judgment as to China's wishes and future actions. They believe that a strong China stabilizes East Asia, while a weak China tempts other states to seek control of the region. Kang's provocative work reveals the flaws in contemporary views on China and offers a new understanding of sound U.S. policy in East Asia.

Despite its increasingly secure place in the world, the People's Republic of China remains dissatisfied with its global status. Its growing material power has simultaneously led to both greater influence and unsettling questions about its international intentions. China also has found itself in a constant struggle to balance its aspirations abroad with a daunting domestic agenda. This authoritative book provides a unique exploration of the complex and dynamic motivations behind Beijing's foreign policy. The authors focus on China's choices and calculations on issues such as the ruling Communist party-regime's interests, international status and image, nationalism, Taiwan, human rights, globalization, U.S. hegemony, international institutions, and the war on terrorism. Taken together, the chapters offer a comprehensive diagnosis of the emerging paradigms in Chinese foreign policy, illuminating especially China's struggle to engineer and manage its rise in light of the opportunities and perils inherent in the post-cold war and post-9/11 world.

Where the last three decades of the 20th century witnessed a China rising on to the global economic stage, the first three decades of the 21st century are almost certain to bring with them the completion of that rise, not only in economic, but also political and geopolitical terms. China's integration into the global economy has brought one-fifth of the global population into the world trading system, which has increased global market potential and integration to an unprecedented level. The increased scale and depth of international specialisation propelled by an enlarged world market has offered new opportunities to boost world production, trade and consumption; with the potential for increasing the welfare of all the countries involved. However, China's integration into the global economy has forced a worldwide reallocation of economic activities. This has increased various kinds of friction in China's trading and political relations with others, as well as generating several globally significant externalities. Finding ways to accommodate China's rise in a way that ensures the future stability and prosperity of the world economy and polity is probably the most important task facing the world community in the first half of the 21st century. The book delves into these issues to reflect upon the wide range of opportunities and challenges that have emerged in the context of a rising China.

As China and the U.S. increasingly compete for power in key areas of U.S. influence, great power conflict looms. Yet few studies have looked to the Middle East and Africa, regions of major political, economic, and military importance for both China and the U.S., to theorize how China competes in a changing world system. China's Rise in the Global South examines China's behavior as a rising power in two key Global South regions, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Dawn C. Murphy, drawing on extensive fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, compares and analyzes thirty years of China's interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid, and military. From the Belt and Road initiative to the founding of new cooperation forums and special envoys, China's Rise in the Global South offers an in-depth look at China's foreign policy approach to the countries it considers its partners in South-South cooperation. Intervening in the emerging debate between liberals and realists about China's future as a great power, Murphy contends that China is constructing an alternate international order to interact with these regions, and this book provides policymakers and scholars of international relations with the tools to analyze it.

"Detailed evaluation from an insider of the Obama administration's efforts, between 2009 and spring 2011, to develop a stable relationship with China while countering China's rise by reinforcing and initiating relationships with other nations in the region"--Provided by the publisher.

This major new study examines the nature of Chinese power and its impact on the international order. Drawing on an extensive range of Chinese-language debates and discussions, the book explains the roles of different actors and interests in Chinese international interactions, and how they influence the nature of Chinese strategies for global change. It also gives a unique perspective on how assessments of the consequences of China’s rise are formed, and how and why these understandings change. Providing an important challenge to scholars and policy makers who seek to engage with China, the book demonstrates just how far starting assumptions can influence the questions asked, evidence sought and conclusions reached.

Horner offers a new interpretation of how China's changed view of its modern historical experience has also changed China's understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition. Spirited reevaluations of history, strategy, commerce, and literature are cooperating--and competing--to define the future.