Constructing a Rising China

Chapter 1 briefed the scenario of understanding China's rise from different perspectives of international relations theories; in those realist perspectives – the economic rise of China coupled with its growing military budget – the assertive stance towards territory disputes is always interpreted as a potential threat to the existing world order which would highly likely lead to a Thucydides trap (Allison 2017). With liberal theories, China's engagement with international organisations was seen as a move towards the integration into the world system and the democratisation of China's political system. However, the centralisation of domestic power in recent years in China has caused growing anxiety about the prospect of this expectation.

Both realist and liberal theories posit an anarchic international system and take material aspects such as economy, military, behaviour and interests as the core factors of analysis. But they cannot adequately interpret the issues around a rising China. The interference frame of China falls into the extreme simplification of international relations. First of all, it focuses too much on the material capacities which assume that rising economic and military status leads to conflict over resources. Human history demonstrates that population explosion does not exhaust resources but stimulates the development of technology which expands world wealth at an unprecedented rate. In addition, the world power structure is more complicated than mere material capacities as realists emphasise; soft power is an obvious example, which is not strictly defined but widely adopted as part of power discussions. Second, the simplification reflects the one- dimensional vision, which has neglected the complication of cultural difference with what is characterised as Eurocentricity by intellectuals. Reality shows that many policymakers in the West are puzzled by the fact that there is an increasing trend of patriotism among Chinese returnees, instead of the push of democratisation in the Western sense. There are more profound social, political and cultural factors that deserve investigation. Wendt (1995) has criticised the liberalists for neglecting the role of individuals and the relationship, social construction of knowledge and different understanding between different cultural groups. Third, the liberalists expect the integration of all states into the liberal institution.