Challenges to Chinese Foreign Policy:Diplomacy, Globalization, and the Next World Power

Yufan Hao, C. X. George Wei, and Lowell Dittmer

When Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, China symbolically demonstrated its role as an emerging world power—a position it is not likely to relinquish anytime soon. China’s growing economy, military reforms, and staggering productivity have contributed to its ascendancy as a major player in international affairs.

Other nations are reevaluating their economic and political relationships with China as it grows into a legitimate superpower. As a bastion of communism and a historically insular country, China remains enigmatic. In Challenges to Chinese Foreign Policy: Diplomacy, Globalization, and the Next World Power, editors Yufan Hao, C.X. George Wei, and Lowell Dittmer define the “peacefully rising” position currently articulated by Beijing and its implications for international peace and security. They also describe the world’s evolving perceptions of Chinese foreign relations, as well as Beijing’s diplomatic strategy toward the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia, and other Asian nations. Western scholars have attempted to explain Chinese foreign policy using historical or theoretical evidence, but until this volume, few studies from a Chinese perspective have been published in English.

Challenges to Chinese Foreign Policy reveals how Chinese scholars view their nation’s rise to global dominance. Drawing on the knowledge of a wealth of foreign relations experts including scholars native to the region, this volume examines the unique challenges China faces as it adapts to being a world leader, and it analyzes how China’s international relationships are shaping the global landscape of the twenty-first century.

Yufan Hao, C. X. George Wei, and Lowell Dittmer Yufan Hao is professor of political science and dean of the faculties of social sciences and humanities at the University of Macao, adjunct professor at Renmin University of China, senior guest professor at Shanghai International Studies University, and chief editor of the Focusing on Sino-American Relations series published by Xinhua Press.

C.X. George Wei is associate professor and chair of the department of history at the University of Macao and guest professor at the Institute of History Research of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China.

Lowell Dittmer, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, is the editor of Asian Survey .