China: Challenging Regional Power

Abstract

China is the most likely candidate as the challenger to the US role in East Asia, but both India and Japan also have the potential to be challengers. Few doubt the intentions of the Chinese to take advantage of China’s growing economic might to elevate its status as a world power. The Chinese in the past routinely and repeatedly stated that they would never become a superpower. That formulation has disappeared in recent years and the Chinese now openly discuss China’s future as a world power. In a recent Beijing Review article entitled ‘Will the 21st Century Belong to China or the United States?’, the well-known Chinese scholar Yan Xuetong asserted that ‘The [US’) status as the world center cannot last forever’ (Li, 2000). The Chinese have not departed from their call, following the collapse of the bipolar cold war structure, for a ‘new order’ based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which is conducive to the maintenance of world peace and peaceful development. They also deplore alliances, power politics and ‘hegemonism,’ and continue to give lip service to the ‘multipolar trend’ in the international system (Qian, 1992; Xing, 1992; Liu, 1992; Zhao, 2001; Zhang, 2001).