Dan Blumenthal
It is now evident that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seeks to revise the balance of power in East Asia and eventually become the region’s hegemon. Over the past decade, Beijing has accelerated its military modernization program, aggressively pressed its maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, coerced and isolated Taiwan, and continued to challenge the United States for control of what is known as “the first island chain”: countries and islets from Japan to parts of Indonesia that to China appear as a potentially linked fence locking it out of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
This chapter explores the four features of the PRC’s revisionism: first, that China’s rise is actually a resurgence to power or, as Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has put it, a “national rejuvenation.” Second, that China seeks a new order based on this imperial Sinosphere, both in its physical boundaries and its worldview. Third, that though China must often behave in accord with the norms and historic patterns of a “normal” nation-state, its dominant personality is that of an empire. Lastly, I look into the constraints on China’s global ambitions, in particular its embrace of the global economic order.
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