China and Global Politics

Abstract

If China had a truly global political role during the Cold War, it was Beijing’s position in the ‘strategic triangle’ with the two superpowers. Chinese officials angrily observed that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the PRC’s status and importance in Washington was immediately downgraded (Wang, 1996, p. 149). The end of the Cold War has left the Asia-Pacific region devolving from bipolarity to multipolarity. Instead of two great powers (‘poles’), each controlling a tight bloc of allies, the new regional power structure sees four large states of more equal capabilities (the USA’s pre-eminent military power is mitigated somewhat by its distance from East Asia) and much greater flexibility in alliance-making. The Gulf War of 1991 dramatized the implications of the post-Cold War era for China. Russia cooperated with NATO in the use of force against Iraq, a former Soviet client. From Beijing’s standpoint, this was a sobering departure from the Cold War status quo, when there was never a serious possibility of Russian-American alliance against Beijing. ‘The new world order advocated by the United States and other Western powers is nothing more than a revised expression of power politics’, wrote one Chinese analyst. ‘The ultimate goal is a world completely dominated by capitalist countries’ (Du, 1991, p. 5).