GREAT POWER COMPETITION, GEOPOLITICS – Mauduit Study Forums

GREAT POWER COMPETITION (GPC)

In recent years, geopolitics defined by the rivalry between the United States and China has determined the dynamics of regional and global orders.
China is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.
With regular Great Power Competition Follow-Ups, we will keep you up-to-date on the evolution of the US-China relationship.
Remy Mauduit
Mauduit Study Forums

This Follow-Up

The Rise and Fall of China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, The Diplomat

China’s practice of “wolf warrior diplomacy,” a new style of coercive diplomacy, has aroused global anxieties over Beijing’s assertiveness in recent years. To some extent, wolf warrior diplomacy has been declining of late, and China’s diplomacy is entering a period of adjustment. It will still take time to see how Beijing is adjusting its foreign policies, particularly its relations with the West. If the adjustment is substantive and comprehensive, wolf warrior diplomacy may only have been a temporary phenomenon. It further suggests that Chinese diplomacy displays belligerence at certain times – reflecting a kind of stress feedback from Beijing on sensitive diplomatic issues and conflicts – but that does not suggest a fundamental shift in China’s foreign policies.

China and the revenge of geopolitics, Financial Times

Short of Armageddon, there is no scenario in which either the US or China will emerge as the world’s sole hegemon. This presents a novel challenge to a West that has been schooled in Manichean conflicts that result in one or the other side claiming victory. It will require unusual strategic patience and skill. To paraphrase China’s former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the West will have to cross the river by feeling the stones, except that the far bank of the river will never be fully visible.

China’s Approach to Global Governance, Council on Foreign Relations

For more than two millennia, monarchs who ruled China proper saw their country as one of the dominant actors in the world. The concept of Zhongguo—the Middle Kingdom, as China calls itself—is not simply geographic. It implies that China is the cultural, political, and economic center of the world. This Sino-centrist worldview has in many ways shaped China’s outlook on global governance—the rules, norms, and institutions that regulate international cooperation. The decline and collapse of imperial China in the 1800s and early 1900s, however, diminished Chinese influence on the global stage for more than a century.

Behind the breakdown in US-China relations, The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
Managing Crises between the U.S. and China: A Conversation with Xin Qiang and Dennis Wilde, The Center for Strategic & International Studies
Xi’s Cautious Inching Towards the China Dream, The RAND Corporation

Changing Geopolitical Context of US Support for Human Rights and Democracy, E-International Relations
Geopolitics and Fragmentation Emerge as Serious Financial Stability Threat, International Monetary Fund
Geopolitics and the China Question, British Foreign Policy Group